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As George W prepares to depart Washington, it’s appropriate to reflect for a moment on the millions of innocent victims who have paid – and are continuing to pay – such a terrible price for his wrongheaded war on terrorism. For example, Alberto Gonzales.
Say what? Al Gonzales, the Bushites’ legal lackey who okayed everything from their use of torture to their secret and illegal program for spying on millions of Americans? That Al Gonzales?
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Yes, that one. Bush’s former attorney general has recently been on a whine tour to try to rewrite the history of his feckless and cowardly performance in office: “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror,” Al whimpered in a Wall Street Journal interview.
Excuse me, Mr. Gonzales, but no. You cannot put yourself in the company of the U.S. soldiers who’ve been killed or brutally maimed because clueless and reckless ideologues like you sent them to war without the protective armor they needed. Nor can you compare yourself to the millions of innocent Iraqi civilians who’ve been killed, maimed, or forced from their homes and their country by the war of lies you helped start.
And even to suggest that you’re on par with real “war on terror” victims who were waterboarded and otherwise tortured with your authorization is itself an atrocity on language, logic, and common decency. You’re not a victim – you’re a perpetrator. Yet, Gonzales, reeks of self-pity. “What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” he asks.
The very fact that he has to ask is a damning measure of his obtuseness. In another way, though, Al really was victimized. He’s one of many unqualified political hacks whom George W thrust into important positions, only to abandon them when they failed. Heck of a job, George.
“Alberto Gonzales,” Austin American Statesman, January 4, 2009.
“Gonzales Defends Role in Antiterror Policies,” www.wsj.com, December 31, 2009.