TORTURED TESTIMONY

The front-page headline says: "Gonzales Speaks Against Torture During Hearing." Well, as Rummy Boy might say, golly gee willikers. How noble of Mr. Gonzales. Give that man a medal. Better yet, make that man attorney general. After all, he says he understands the difference between being White House counsel, his current job, and being the nation's top law enforcer.

If he's confirmed, he says he'll represent all the people instead of just the president. Well, golly gee again. Does that also sorta mean by implication that he sorta believed in torture when he repped the Maximum Leader and drafted a memorandum calling the Geneva Conventions irrelevant? And that Georgie Boy sorta believed in torture, too?

Others besides Straight Up's staff of thousands have not been taken in by Gonzales's softspeak. Bob Herbert also casts a cold eye this morning. "The Bush administration and Mr. Gonzales are trying to sell the fiction that they've seen the light," he writes in "Promoting Torture's Promoter." Herbert points to a recent story in The Washington Post that the Bush regime is even now making plans to negate the due process of law by possibly imprisoning suspected terrorists for life without ever bringing charges against them in court.

Citing last month's ruling by Britain's highest court that, as one of the justices wrote, such detentions "call into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention," Herbert concludes: "That's a sentiment completely lost on Alberto Gonzales or George W. Bush."

And as the lead editorial in this morning's New York Times so nicely put it, speaking of Gonzales and his sense of responsibility:

Even vows of allegiance to the rule of law were rather peculiar. He said that as White House counsel, he had represented "only the White House," while as attorney general, he "would have a far broader responsibility: to pursue justice for all the people of our great nation, to see that the laws are enforced in a fair and impartial manner for all Americans." We thought that was also the obligation of the president and his staff.

Postscript: The Washington Post's news story this morning is worth reading for these paragraphs:

Gonzales declined to answer many questions and said he could not recall details in relation to many others, prompting complaints from some Democrats on the committee.

"We're looking for you, when we ask you questions, to give us an answer, which you haven't done yet," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told Gonzales. "I love you, but you're not very candid so far."

Four different senators tried to pin down Gonzales on the August 2002 memo's controversial assertion that a president had the power to authorize torture in unusual circumstances, but Gonzales deflected that, saying it was a "hypothetical question." ...

At the same time, Gonzales did not rule out reaching such a conclusion in the future. "I would have to know what . . . is the national interest that the president may have to consider," he told Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.).

The Los Angeles Times news story was also worth a read for these grafs:

"What was lacking in this hearing was a fuller measure of accountability, something that has long been lacking from this administration," said Vermont Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "The Bush administration's torture policy seems to have been created through spontaneous combustion. No one will take responsibility for it."

Pressed by several Democrats about whether he personally agreed with the conclusions of the memo, Gonzales demurred, noting that a new opinion on the subject from the Justice Department issued last week rejected the most controversial aspects of the earlier document -- albeit more than two years after it was issued.

The original memo "does not represent the views of the executive branch. It has been replaced by a new opinion . . . and so as far as I am concerned it is not an issue," Gonzales said.

Democrats said he had a legal and moral duty to speak up sooner. "You never repudiated it. That's the record. You never repudiated it," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, adding that the failure to do so made "hollow" the president's directive that soldiers act humanely.

Hollow indeed. The professed right to authorize torture no longer counts because "it has been replaced by a new opinion." The regime's m.o., as represented by Gonzales, is a triumph of something worse than sophistry -- unmitigated gall.