Legal opinions at the highest level have grave consequences

Legal opinions at the highest level have grave consequences. What were the consequences of Gonzales’s actions?

The policies for which Gonzales provided a cover of legality – views which he expressly reasserted in his

Senate confirmation hearings – inexorably led to abuses that have undermined military discipline and the moral

authority our nation once carried. His actions led directly to documented violations at Abu Ghraib and

Guantanamo and widespread abusive conduct in locales around the world.

Michael Posner of Human Rights First observed: “After the horrific images from Abu Ghraib became public last

year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the world should ‘judge us by our actions [and] watch

how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own

mistakes.’” We agree. It is because of this that we believe the only proper course of action is for the Senate

to reject Alberto Gonzales’s nomination for Attorney General. As Posner notes, “[t]he world is indeed

watching.” Will the Senate condone torture? Will the Senate condone the rejection of the rule of law?

With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of

conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen,

at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United

States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.