Nomination of Gonzales: Insanity.

[kuozzman]

http://ignorantusa.tripod.com/

Here are some facts we know about Mr. Gonzales. These are all quotes taken from Senators during his confirmation hearings.

• He declined to answer or evaded many of the questions we asked him at the hearing.
• He has failed to provide full and forthright answers to our follow-up written questions.
• He says he can't remember what specific interrogation methods were discussed.
• He can't remember who asked for the Justice Department's legal advice in the first place.
• He can't remember whether he made any suggestions to the Department on the drafting of the Bybee Memorandum, although he admits that "it would not be unusual" for his office to have done so.
• He doesn't know how the memo was forwarded to the Defense Department and became part of its "Working Group Report" in April 2003, which was used to justify the new interrogation practices at Guantanamo. Those practices, in turn, "migrated" to military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• He refuses to provide or even conduct a search for documents relating to his request for the Goldsmith Memorandum.
• He refuses to say anything about his discussions with the author of the memo.
• He says he doesn't know whether the C.I.A. acted on the memo, as the Washington Post reported.
• He even says that he has never had the "occasion to come to definitive views" about the analysis in the memo.
• (The committee) has repeatedly asked Mr. Gonzales to provide documents on his meetings, evaluations, and decisions on the Bybee Memorandum. These documents would speak volumes about all the issues Mr. Gonzales says he has trouble remembering. Yet he refuses to provide the documents. He won't even search for them. In his responses to my written questions, Mr. Gonzales stated eight times that he has not "conducted a search" for the requested documents. In other words, the documents we want may exist, but he's not going to look for them. It's hard to imagine a more arrogant insult to this Committee's oversight role.
• Mr. Gonzales refused to answer other questions and requests on the grounds that they would involve "classified information," "predecisional" or "internal deliberations," or "deliberative material." None of these grounds is sufficient. There is no legal bar to providing classified materials to Congress; they're routinely provided to Congress and discussed in closed meetings. There is no recognized privilege for "predecisional" or "deliberative" materials. The only exception is in the rare case where the President himself determines that his interest in secrecy outweighs the public interest in disclosure, and he himself invokes executive privilege. That hasn't happened here.
• In his response to our questions, Mr. Gonzales said that he has "no specific recollection of reaction to the conclusions, reasoning, or appropriateness as a matter of policy of any of the particular sections of the memorandum at the time received it two-and-a-half years ago."

More info at http://ignorantusa.tripod.com/

[KissMeKate]

1. important for our reps to know this

please forward these objections to your elected official- I hate the "we didnt know" excuse.