AG stands for Attorney General as well as Abu Ghraib. It also stands for Alberto Gonzales, and the conventional wisdom is that all three will be inextricably linked sometime after the inauguration. Most Democrats see "Abu Gonzales" as a casually horrifying inevitability, and Congressional leadership seems resigned to asking the proverbial "hard questions" before ultimately signing off on him.
Even The New York Times offered Gonzales a minor inoculation against criticism of the vetting process in the botched Bernard Kerik nomination -- which is, weirdly enough, perceived as perhaps the one thing that could put a corresponding kibosh on Gonzales at this point. Team Bush hasn't been nearly so shy, absolving Gonzales outright for a perceived failure to ask tough questions (or, apparently, even just sit down with Google for five minutes).
But you never know when the cavalry will appear over the Hill, nor who will be leading the charge. And in this case, the cavalry is a group of former high-ranking military lawyers who are, for various reasons, actively seeking ways to derail Gonzales' nomination.
Their leader appears to be Rear Adm. John D. Hutson (Ret.), formerly the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General (1997-2000) and currently president and dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire. In
Thursday's New York Times, he makes the case against Gonzales' "unsound legal judgment" from both a human rights and military operations standpoint:
A memorandum prepared under Mr. Gonzales's supervision by a legal task force concluded that Mr. Bush was not bound either by an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation.
The memorandum also said that executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons, including a belief by interrogators that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful." Another memorandum said the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan.
Mr. Hutson ... said that Mr. Gonzales "was not thinking about the impact of his behavior on U.S. troops in this war and others to come."
"He was not thinking about the United States' history in abiding by international law, especially in the wartime context," he said. "For that reason, some of us think he is a poor choice to be attorney general."
Naturally, there is a certain amount of self-interest in military opposition to Gonzales' nomination, as expressed concisely by Brig. Gen. James Cullen (U.S. Army Ret.), now practicing law in New York City:
[Cullen] ... said on Wednesday that he believed that in supervising the memorandums, Mr. Gonzales had purposely ignored the advice of lawyers whose views did not accord with the conclusions he sought, which was that there was some legal justification for illegal behavior.
...
The memorandums produced largely by lawyers in the Justice Department and other government agencies created great bitterness at the time among military lawyers, who said they were not consulted.
At the same time, it's hard to argue against, well, being right:
"[Gonzales] went forum-shopping," General Cullen said, saying Mr. Gonzales had ignored the advice of military lawyers adamantly opposed to some of the legal strategies adopted, including narrowly defining torture so as to make it difficult to prove it occurred. "When you create these kinds of policies that can eventually be used against your own soldiers, when we say 'only follow the Geneva Conventions as much as it suits us,' when we take steps that the common man would understand is torture, this undermines what we are supposed to be, and many of us find it appalling," he said.
However, the military lawyers remain undecided about how best to express their opposition to Gonzales' nomination, largely because they're not convinced it will make any difference in the long run:
Mr. Hutson said talks with other retired senior military officials had not yet produced a decision on how to oppose the selection, though testifying at the hearings was a possibility. He said that while several opposed the nomination, some were unsure if opposition would be "worth the effort" because of little expectation the nomination could be derailed.
That may be where the voters can join the fray. The detonation of the Kerik nomination has left a small but spreading fissure in Gonzales' bulwark as well, and it's hard to justify saving the effort for the SCOTUS when serendipity -- and the cavalry -- show up on your doorstep.
Write your Congresscritters and urge them to oppose Gonzales. The worst that can happen is that they'll ignore you -- and the best may be that King George gets schooled in a way he'll never live down.
(By the way, this is my first diary. Hope I'm not duplicating anyone's efforts; I did search for something covering this article and didn't find anything. Constructive criticism welcome. And yes, I did consider titling it "Bring Me the Head of Alberto Gonzales," but I decided I could do without a holiday visit from the MIBs.)