I Was Only Issuing Orders

The New York Times reveals that Alberto Gonzales circumvented established guidelines and personally requested the Justice Department to draft an opinion as to whether Commander Codpiece could order that detainees be given forced enemas and the like:

Until now, administration officials have been unwilling to provide details about the role Mr. Gonzales had in the production of the memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his.

[…]

Mr. Yoo said that Mr. Gonzales was merely seeking to ‘understand all available options’ in a perilous time, when the United States faced unprecedented threats.

But a senior administration official disagreed, saying that the memorandum’s conclusions appeared to closely align with the prevailing White House view of interrogation practices. The official said the memorandum raised questions about whether the Office of Legal Counsel had maintained its longstanding tradition of dispensing objective legal advice to its clients in executive-branch agencies.

What senior administration official do you suppose that is?

The last few days have seen a flood of off the record statements to the NY Times indicting Gonzales. Evidently, there are quite a few people even within the administration who want to see this guy bloodied up if not derailed. This is highly unusual in the Bush administration, to say the least.

Gonzales is one of Bush’s closest cronies and like Kerik, there’s probably no telling the King that his boy is a problem. It looks to me as if plenty of people know that Gonzales is pathologically loyal to Junior and enables his worst impulses. And they also know that he’s likely to do even more harm to this country than even they are willing to do. That really says something.

I’m beginning to wonder if there maybe isn’t a chance to offload this guy completely rather than just bloody him up. Yesterday, Jeffrey Dubner at TAPPED set forth the idea that rehashing the Bernie Kerik episode might be a wiser use of the committee’s time. My initial reaction was that it was better to concentrate on the torture (I can’t believe I’m even writing that) because this was really an opportunity for Democrats to use a losing battle to put the Republicans on the defensive in the values debate. Now, I’m not so sure. If there is any real chance of peeling off a few Republicans, the Bernie Kerik episode is the one that will get the press to pay attention. Sleaze and trivia is what they understand, and the story is quite recent and still unfolding. Torture is so last spring.

I still lead heavily toward the idea that the hearings must be used to highlight the extreme immorality of the Republican Party, but this has certainly made me wonder if maybe Gonzales isn’t a lot weaker than we think.