First - Gonzales "Legalizes" Torture.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House
counsel, intervened directly wi th Justice Department lawyers in 2002 to
obtain a legal ruling on the extent of the president's authority to
permit extreme interrogation practices in the name of national security.
A request by Mr. Gonzales produced the Justice Department memorandum
of Aug. 1, 2002, which defined torture narrowly and said that Mr. Bush
could circumvent domestic and international prohibitions against torture
in the name of national security. The issue was whether al Qaeda and
Taliban fighters captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan should be
accorded the Geneva Conventions' human rights protections.
Gonzales, after reviewing a legal brief from the Justice Department's
Office of Legal Counsel, advised Bush verbally on Jan. 18, 2002, that he
had authority to exempt the detainees from such protections. Bush
agreed, reversing a decades-old policy aimed in part at ensuring equal
treatment for U.S. military detainees around the world. Rumsfeld issued
an order the next day to command ers that detainees would receive such
protections only "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military
necessity."
On January 25, 2002, Gonzales wrote a memo to President Bush arguing
that the terrorism fight "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations
on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its
provisions."
''My judgment was ... that it would not apply to al-Qaida or others -
as they weren't a signatory to the convention,'' he said.
When the text was leaked to the public last summer, it attracted
scorn from military lawyers and human rights experts worldwide. Nigel
Rodley, a British lawyer who served as the special U.N. reporter on
torture and inhumane treatment from 1993 to 2001, remarked that its
underlying doctrine "sounds like the discredited legal theories used by
Latin American countries" to justify repression." End of Quote
Second - Gonzales "Legalizes" Repression.
Quote: "WASHINGTON (Feb. 6) -- Attorney Gener al Alberto
Gonzales insisted Monday that President Bush was "acting with authority"
both under the Constitution and federal law in eavesdropping on
Americans without warrants. In a statement prepared for the hearing,
Gonzales called the monitoring program "reasonable" and "lawful."
Gonzales, who was not sworn in, told the committee, "As the president
has explained, the terrorist surveillance program operated by the
(electronic-monitoring National Security Agency) requires the maximum in
speed and agility, since even a very short delay may make the difference
between success and failure in preventing the next attack."
His arguments reiterated those defending President Bush's decision to
allow the NSA to eavesdrop, without first obtaining warrants, on people
inside the United States whose calls or e-mails may be linked to
terrorism.
But in his prepared remarks, Gonzales said he could not discuss how
the program works, as skeptics of the program have demanded . "An open
discussion of the operational details of this program would put the
lives of Americans at risk," he said.
Gonzales argued that Congress did, in fact, authorize the president
in September 2001 to use military force in the war on terror.
He noted that the legislation "calls on the president to protect
Americans both 'at home and abroad,'" and "to take action to prevent
further terrorist attacks 'against the United States.'"
But congressional Democrats have said they did not intend to order
domestic surveillance." End of quote
And so - as the Chicago Mafia Gangsters used to say - "The Fix Is In" -
The Bush "legal mouthpiece" has produced "Legalized Torture and
Repression" - Just like Germany had in 1933.
Alberto Gonzales is a lot like Franz Gurtner, another conservative
nationalist lawyer and judge - who was appointed by Hitler to head the
Reich Ministry of Justice, and who got along - very well - with the Nazis
despite not being a Nazi himself.
How did the German Legal system change as a result of Nazi
'leadership'?
Fear-mongering was the main tool used to change the law, and to
undermine civil liberties. So, where the constitution was changed, the
code of criminal procedure was also changed, extraordinary powers were
vested in the Executive, including extensive police powers; and the powers
of an independent judiciary were destroyed.
This was all done based on a "terrorist menace." And exactly what the
menace was, shifted from time to time during the Nazi period. It was a
matter of opportunism, or convenience.
Judges couldn't be impartial anymore. They used only Nazi
interpretations in making their decisions. In the everyday practice of law
the ideas of the Fuhrer (Hitler) were silently but loyally followed.
People feared the legal system, but nobody could - legally - stop Hitler.
And even Nazis no longer had the civil rights once guaranteed by the
German constitution.
Hitler was asked - In September 1931: "How do you imagine the setting
up of a Third Reich?" His reply was, " We will enter the legal
organizations and will make our Party a decisive factor in this way. But
when we do possess constitutional rights then we will form the State in
the manner which we consider to be the right one." Hitler was asked: "This
too by constitutional means ?" Hitler replied: "Yes."
Nazi conspirators participated in German elections, the legal system,
and in the Reichstag to undermine the parliamentary and judicial system of
the German Republic and to replace it with a dictatorship of their own.
On 30 April 1928, Goebbels wrote in his paper "Der Angriff": "We enter
parliament in order to supply ourselves, inside the arsenal of democracy,
with its own weapons. We become members of the Reichstag in order to
paralyze the liberal Weimar sentiment with its own assistance. If
democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and per diem for the
this "blockade" (Barendienst), that is its own affair." Later in the same
article he continued: "We do not come as friend nor even as neutrals. We
come as enemies: As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come."
Crucially, Gurtner - like Alito and Gonzales - ruled that vital
"national interests" - as defined by Hitler as head of state - had
precedence over the rule of law. Time and time again, Gurtner supported
unlawful measures and even murders, because they had been declared by
Hitler as crucial for the "survival of the state." That's what makes the
efforts by some American lawyers - like Alito and Gonzales - and most GOP
politicians - to argue that the president can and should be above the law
- so disturbing.
It appears that the GOP has transformed America into a society where we
are ruled by 'special men' - rather than by laws - so we are all subject
to the whims of the president and his appointees.
A president or appointee who imagines himself to be ab ove the law is
mentally and morally unfit to serve in public office; government lawyers
who argue that the president is above the law are apologists for a
dictatorship. They are the modern equivalents of Franz Gurtner, justifying
the Nazi abuse of power and legal authority in the name of 'national
security'.
[L]ike Hitler, the top police officials were open about the fact that
they did not see themselves as bound by legal norms. In a speech to the
Academy of German Law in October, 1936, Himmler bluntly stated: "Right
from the start I took the view that it did not matter in the least if our
actions were contrary to some clause in the law; in my work for the Fuhrer
and the nation, I do what my conscience and common sense tells me is
right."
Disregard for the letter of the law was seen as crucial to the Nazi
defense of 'national interests.' The German police styled itself the
"domestic army." Just as the German army on the battlefield could not be
subject to legal regulat ion, so too, it was claimed, the fight of the
German police at home must not be constrained by the rule of law.
American soldiers and government contractors continue to violate the
Geneva Conventions and laws against torture to serve the interests of
their president and his appointees. They do what their immediate superiors
tell them to do - as directed by both implicit and explicit statements
from others high up the chain of command. Their actions are wrong, and
they justify themselves by the same excuses used by police and military
officials in Nazi Germany.
Today domestic surveillance exceeds that which is permitted by US law.
Police, FBI, and National Security personnel believe that their attempts
to fight terrorism justifies ignoring the law - indeed, they argue that
laws which protect the rights of the accused and the innocent simply
hamper police investigations and need to be curtailed. Franz Gurtner and
Alberto Gonzales certainly agree.
As Himmler explai ned to German army generals on 21 June 1944, he could
not care less whether the actions were legal or not: "What is necessary
for Germany will be done, however horrifying it may be."
The legal system, Hitler warned (in a speech to the Reichstag on 26
April 1942), must have only one thought: German Victory. It was high time,
he continued, that the legal system realized that it did not exist for its
own sake, but for 'national interests'.
Goebbels said, in 1935: "When democracy granted democratic methods for
us in the times of opposition, this could only happen in a democratic
system. However, we National Socialists never asserted that we represented
a democratic point of view, but we have declared openly that we used
democratic methods only in order to gain the power and that, after
assuming the power, we would deny to our adversaries, without any
consideration, the means which were granted to us in the times of
opposition."
A leading Nazi writer on Constitution al Law, Ernst Rudolf Huber, later
wrote of this period: "The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP had the
single purpose of destroying the parliamentary system from within through
its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal use of the
possibilities of the party-state system but to refuse real cooperation and
thereby to render the parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent
upon the responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of action."
And today, GOP appointees like Gonzales and Alito and virtually all GOP
elected officials think - and act - exactly like Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels
and Franz Gurtner - and no longer have to care whether their actions are
legal or not, as they impose the "Rule of Bush" over the stupid US
Sheeple.
And they're just as "Legal" as Hitler was in 1933.
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