Friday, August 31, 2007

With Gonzales gone is it time to probe the war on terror policies

Edward Lazarus thinks that, now that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned, it is time for the US to have a wide public debate about the Bush administration's policies relating to the 'war on terror'.

"It's been inevitable for quite a while, and now it has finally happened: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has abandoned his bedraggled rear-guard action and resigned his post. It is not hard to sum up Gonzales's legacy at the Department of Justice: He leaves behind a shattered agency - a corps of loyal career public servants who were forced to choose between opting out of their life's work, and watching helplessly as Gonzales (and other top officials) consistently chose loyalty to the President and partisan advantage over professionalism and even-handed enforcement of the law...

Now that Gonzales has joined the merry ranks of Bushies abruptly deciding to attend more closely to family concerns... There are three obvious items on the agenda: the pending investigations, the goal of re-invigorating DOJ, and the debate over the questionable legal theories underlying the Bush Administration's approach to the war on terror (policies that DOJ, under both Ashcroft and Gonzales, rationalized and implemented). All of these issues are important, but none, in my view, is as important at this particular moment than the last."

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