Jesse Jackson: Bush Picks Another Loser
Is Abu Ghraib something that this country wants to reward? Is the torture that shamed us across the world and angered the professionals in the Pentagon for putting our own troops at risk now to be embraced and celebrated? It is hard to imagine anyone less suited to be attorney general after Sept. 11 than John Ashcroft, President Bush's unfortunate choice for his first term. Amazingly, with Ashcroft's resignation, Bush seeks to have him succeeded by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the zealous partisan who generated the memos that argued the president had the right to trample the Geneva Convention and authorize the torture of prisoners -- and that led directly to the crimes of Abu Ghraib. The attorney general is America's lawyer. He or she is supposed to be not a partisan operator but a thoughtful advocate of justice. With the fears generated by Sept. 11 and the terrorist threat, we need an attorney general who can rouse the Justice Department and the FBI to pursue those who would harm us, even while protecting the rights of the innocent. We need someone who understands that you cannot defend America by trampling the Constitution, freedoms and rights that you are tasked to defend. Gonzales has shown that he doesn't understand that loyalty to the law must supercede loyalty to his patron. Even without the Abu Ghraib memos, Gonzales would be a suspect choice. He is a long time crony of Bush. For years, he was counsel at Vinson and Elkins, the firm that represents Enron and Halliburton, both under active investigation by the Department of Justice. [more]