Alberto should be in prison.

Abrams Research is a PR outfit, is this a genuine piece of journalism or is it an info-mercial?
In other words Mr Abrams, is AG a client of yours (were you paid to do this and by whom)?

The point about torture that seems to be left out by the media is that the torture was used to make the case that Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda. The media is not reporting on this aspect of the torture case. Has this angle been discredited? I haven't seen anything to the contrary. If that is the case, then people in the administration have no choice than to argue that we didn't torture. It is in their best interest not to argue about the connection that they tried to make and were unable to make convincingly. These people have no standing since they have lied in the past and continue to do so. This is why we need a special prosecutor (my choice is Patrick Fitzgerald) to get to the bottom of the case for torture. So I ask this question one more time: Has the assertion that the Bush administration used torture to forge a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda been discredited?

"AG: And then secondly, to say that we have now discontinued these techniques. They may be necessary in the future. And by disclosing it, means you take them off the table and they can never be used again."


This is the problem. They were never supposed to be used in the first place. If you don't prosecute they will be used again.

Today they torture Al Q. Tomorrow it will b us.

I have to wonder why anyone cares about this issue to speak of. I guess it gives the intellectuals and liberals of the world something to rip Bush on but here In the heartland of American farm country, noone cares. The vicious dogs blow their enemies to bits and cut heads off yet we weap over gettin em wet.

It was torture after WWII and it's torture now.Guilty,guilty,guilty.........

Whoaaa up there pardner! I too, happen to live here in the heartland of American farm country, and in fact also happen to be a farmer right here in one of the reddest of the red states.

Now, when I was growing up the term "red" had an entirely different connotation than it does today.

You asked "why anyone cares about this issue to speak of", and one reason is that even us farmers know how to listen.
We listen to the wind, we listen to the crows, we listen to the lawyers as they dance around issues.

One of the things this farmer heard was; Ashcroft stating, "keep dangerous people who we apprehend on the battlefields from being released." Now, another trait common to us farmers here in the heartland of America is the ability to remember.

I clearly remember during the aftermath of the 9/11 debacle/attack, Mr. Rumsfeld (Mr. Ashcroft's evil co-joined at the hip twin) stating that the "battlefields" of the past no longer exist, that we are now confronting a new enemy.

Under the new interpretation of "battlefield" our very own backyards, or in my case acreages, could now be considered the "battlefields". If the government decided that I may be an
"enemy combatant", they could pick me up in the middle of the night, haul my farmer's rear-end off to the pokey, hold me indefinitely, waterboard me several hundred times, and then shroud their mistake under the auspices of national security.

If you cannot understand the inherent danger this type of thinking poses to all Americans, then you ought to go back and try to gain your high school diploma. Oh, I have sympathy for the difficulty one may have in cutting through the legal-speak of the lawyer boys, afterall they go to graduate school to learn how to obfuscate, and argue.

But, when you distill this whole deal down, what we find is an unprecedented attack on American civil liberties. Do you remember that saying "Give me liberty, or give me death?"
That, my friend submariner, is the true issue!

Should waterboarding be considered "torture"? That I do not know, but should the guvm'nt be able to wisk Americans away under definitions decided behind political closed doors?

That question, even a farmer can answer!!!

I doubt that our soldiers would allow themselves to be shot in the knee caps, or have fingers or toes cut off, or burned with hot irons or anything else which would result in permanent injury as part of a training excercise against terrorism.....If I were a mother of a soldier and thought that the techniques used by our government were the worst that would happen to them if captured by the enemy, I think I could sleep a lot easier...I think that governments of most other countries both ally and enemy, are laughing at us right now....

This interview just reinforces why they should investigate and consider prosecutions. It's clear that they just don't get it, particularly AG. He appears to be saying that it was their view that the techniques were "not torture" under "certain conditions" which had nothing to do with the method but with the threat level or the results. In other words, if we perceived we're under threat and the technique works, it's not torture. And he's serious, which is the scary part.

It's really hard to believe this guy got any school to give him a degree or any state to put him on the bar with such poor basic logic. Look, the technique is either torture or its not - that doesn't change regardless of the threat level or the results. You can argue whether the U.S. is justified to use torture in certain conditions, but to try and make a legal distinction that it ceases to be torture under those conditions is just moronic to the core. It's akin to a bank robber saying it's not theft if he really needed the money. Or a guy who kills his wife in a fit of jealousy saying it's not homicide because he thought she was cheating.

All this interview reinforces, besides Albert's stunning lack of basic intelligence, is that those involved convinced themselves that any means is justified by the perceived end result. We're under attack, so it's okay to bend the rules because we're fighting for our lives, right? The fact that we're breaking International Law is irrelevant; the fact that we sometimes detained and tortured innocent people is unfortunate but acceptable. Etc.

First of all, in point of fact the jury is still out on whether it was "effective." There has yet to be any concrete proof of this, only indirect assertions and the dumb logic of "well we haven't been attacked again, so it must have worked." More importantly, it has started to come out that much of the supposed basis for this assertion has turned out to be discredited. The same people who were supposedly on the inside and said it worked have later been proven to be lying or asserting things they didn't have any direct knowledge of (for example, Rush, Glen and their like all widely quoted as proof a former CIA agent who said waterboarding "cracked" a particular suspect in about 20 seconds on the first try and asked if 20 seconds is really "torture"; the memos recently released prove he was subjected to almost 100 extended sessions - so I guess he didn't "crack in 20 seconds"). But let's put a pin in that little detail and assume for the sake of argument that through the thousands of incidents of torture, some useful intel did come out of it...

Guys, didn't we learn in grade school that the ends don't justify the means and that might wasn't always right? If the ends do justify the means, we need to seriously re-think our position on a lot of other history. For example, the Japanese before WWII had serious reason to feel threatened by the U.S. due to our embargos and blockades of their interests in Asia - much akin to our concern about the flow of oil in the Middle East now. So if their end result was the neutralize the threat the U.S. had created with these actions and protect their own economic interests, then was a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor a morally justified action? So if an Iraqi group decided to send in a covert force to the U.S. and kidnap random people and ship them back to a secret, protected location and indefinitely hold them and torture them because any one of them might have useful intel on U.S. policy toward Iraq, is that ok? After all, their country is under occupation, a military action never sanctioned by the U.N. So its fair to say some of them have reason to believe they are under attack from the U.S.

The worst responses you read here and elsewhere is from posters who try and turn it around and say "at least we're not blowing up babies or cutting off heads like those terrorists are." Really, do you really believe that makes it all ok? So I guess you never learned "two wrongs don't make a right" in Sunday School either. But just to be clear - what you are saying when you respond like that is the following: 1) Someone commits a wrong against me and may do so again; 2) Therefore I am justified in committing what I perceive to be "lesser" wrongs to someone else, who may have nothing to do with the first party, to lessen the chance of the first party wronging me again. So I guess by that logic, if someone is robbed and he has reason to believe his neighbor's teenage kid was involved, its okay for him to detain and rough up that kid to see if he can get the boy to admit it. If it turns out he got the wrong kid, that's ok, because he was only trying to protect himself. Ok, I get it now, that makes total sense...

Look, those of us against the use and justification of torture, aren't in denial that we're under threat of future attacks, or that more innocent lives will likely be lost. The truth is in much of the world people have been under this threat constantly. Yet we don't look favorably on those people when they start responding by kidnapping, torture or other violations of human rights. So why is it uniquely ok if we respond to the very real threat that way? And some of us also believe that, moral objections aside, its simply bad strategy. We may win a battle but we'll lose the war with Bush's twisted logic. Our actions have made us less secure, not more so. We have helped take a minority fringe group of extremists and make their hatred of America vastly more popular with millions of other people who initially reacted with horror to the actions of 9/11. And by proving that we're quickly willing to abandon our own moral and legal code the moment we feel threatened, we've also impossibly compromising our ability to expect humane responses to our own citizens in the future. We've lost our moral credibility. And that's much more important to our security in the long run, not to mention to the justification of our system of government. If we start ignoring the principles of our Constitution the document is worthless. And then on what basis do we justify our government and laws at all? This isn't just a high-minded principle, it has very real implications on our ability to survive as a country in the long run.

But to end on a note of optimism, there's every reason to believe a majority of us "get it." Thank god.

In delaying/avoiding any decision to prosecute the previous Administration, Obama is attempting to avoid a demoralising, divisive and painfully introspective look at itself.

All of the defenses and mitigations put forward by the Bush administration are of the same form as those proferred by the Nazi regime post WW2. Essentially based on false premises that a form of behavior could be allowed in their regime despite numerous treaties and international laws to the contrary.

We all know that there was a deliberate attempt to get legal justification for the torture; and if the people involved were literally *ANYBODY* apart from the previous US administration they would be impeached.

I don't see how Obama's administration is going to dodge the issue, maybe Obama is trying to trump the legal obligation with the pragmatic desire to go forward.

It was torture. Period. These guys broke the law as did the rest of this administration. I want them prosecuted so that any president doesn't think they have the right to abduct and torture me without due process. Will the law of the land be upheld or will our system of special exceptions for those with money and power remain intact? Holding Bush & his gang accountable is not about retribution, it is about keeping liberty protected and keeping the constitution viable.

These two still don't understand that they live/lived in a country that 1) Has laws, and, 2) the country they live/lived in has International obligations under which we have agreed certain global truth. The primary is that TORTURE IS ILLEGAL - EVERYWHERE.

These folks belong at the Hague in a cue for their WAR CRIMES TRIALS..As soon as possible..(today is too late).

These two, in addition of course to the unholy trinity of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, are ideological demagogues, who would twist, not only the constitution, but even the bible, if need be to justify the unjustifiable acts of professional treason they committed. They were entrusted with America's constitution, and to uphold the laws of that constitution, and instead they manipulated it in a most self-serving deceitful way to give the devoid-of-any-sense-of-morality Bush administration the legal cover it needed to break the law and rape its soul and the very foundation it was built on. One, if driven enough by ideology, like Bush's cronies, can easily justify his wrongdoing by any crap so long as he adorns it with the banal, overly-used and abused key words like terrorism, national security, Alqaida, Saddam..etc.

America hasn't been so soiled and its name and moral standing marred with dirt, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, like it did with the historical mistake of Bush's presidency. It was a dark ugly chapter in the history of this country, which, undoubtedly, will stand with the worst of them in the trash can of history.

it is beyond belief that someone so educated can be so stupid and without remorse for what they did. Both should be in jail with bubba as a cellmate. Gonzo who when in front of congress couldn't remember his name now finds only answeres to save his butt. They should take the whole gang including bush and cheney and rummy and lock them up, maybe bushey would lose that smug look on his face when he heard the door slam shut and cheney could be left to die the death god intended for him to have,,,, Its a shame that we will not see the punishment they will get in the end!

At the beginning of world war II, my uncle was stationed with the North China Marines. His unit was taken captive by the Japanese and he was a POW throughout the war. He was waterboarded by the Japanese along with others in his unit. At the end of the war, the commander of the prison where he was kept was prosecuted for war crimes. How anyone can say that waterboarding is legal is beyond me. It is inhuman and we have never been given an Exhibit A that would show what information was gained in this process that "saved lives".

Anyone else notice Abrams' mischaracterization of the voter-fraud issue? It wasn't an issue of US Attorneys going off the policy reservation and saying, "I don't care about voter fraud." They weren't political enemies of Bush, they were Bush appointees. The problem was that the Bush folks wanted prosecutions that these US Attorneys could not, as legal professionals, pursue in good faith. That's why they were fired.

Abrams' question is irrelevant, and allowed Gonzalez to skate.

This is the problem with putting ideologues in positions of power. The elder Bush "herbert walker" also had no respect for the institutions of the nation. He constantly skirted the laws of the land, pushing, and pushing the limits of the Constitution. Thus you get a creep like "W" to chirp "just a goddamn piece of paper". Neither of them has a clue as to what holds the country together.

Hopefully we will not get the ideologues from the left gaining too strong a foothold as the coming years unfold.

Thank you to Mr. Abrams for posting this partial transcript. I was in the audience. I'm not a Bush supporter at all, and really don't like many things that Mr. Gonzales did while in office. I think Mr. Abrams lost some in the audience b/c the questioning was a bit like non-stop cross-exam. It was "brutal" as he says, but it also didn't let up over a long period of time. So, even some anti-Gonzales people like me started to wonder if Mr. Abrams was, perhaps, pursuing his own agenda at some point. Mr. Abrams shouldn't take it personally, though. He's obviously very sharp and well spoken. And if he had been playing the role of, say, prosecutor at Mr. Gonzales' trial, he'd have done a superb job.

on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me... last weekend one panelist said "Saying that waterboarding is okay because it works is like a shoplifter saying 'Call it what you want, but look at all this cool stuff I got!'" and that really struck me as a good analogy. Why is it that when it supposedly works (meaning we get information that supposedly saves lives) it's ok?

I was really hoping that Dan would get as lucky as Frost did with Nixon and get Gonzo to actually answer a meaningful question about his tenure... maybe next time.

To me, it is a question of what kind of a world do we wish to live in?

Do we wish to live in a world where the highest public officials lie about matters of the gravest concern, condone practices which ought to disgust most human beings, and do these and other evil deeds with impunity?

If we, as a people, as a nation, do nothing but ignore the errors and malicious blunders of the Bush administration, we create a wound in the national psyche which will not heal. We communicate to the rest of the world that we are hypocrites.

Aren't we still dealing with the savaging of America's bounty, the decimation of the Original Peoples, and the "business as usual" of the slave trade?

I do not know if such grave offenses can ever be resolved. But if we do not try, we cast a vote for barbarism in human affairs. We say to ourselves and to our children that the world is inherently an evil place and there is no value in resisting the evil deeds of ourselves or others.

How many State Attorney Generals were fired, after Bill Clinton was sworn in?

Who cares whether it's legal. Is it right?

I am absolutey and completely FLOORED by the thought that there is any question as to what is "torture" and "illegal." I cannot comprehend that, in some people's minds, what we did to the detainees/rotten little bastards was not torture and illegal. But I have an idea how to show them; it would serve the dual purpose of moral lesson and entertainment. Let's have a little prime-time live reality show on all the major networks: each week we will examine one "interrogation technique" in depth by snatching ten random adults off the street and subjecting them to one typical round of the technique. The public could then vote Idol-style whether they believe it is torture or not. There can be military physicians there to monitor the detainee's health and CIA oversight to ensure that the interrogators follow all rules and regulations. Whaddayathink?

That had to be an excruciating interview, because I was getting frustrated simply reading it! Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for making the attempt...As an American citizen, I believe they got it wrong. As a lawyer, I know they got it wrong. Minimally, we have a President who has not only read the Constitution but studied it, understands it, believes in it, and will strive to keep it in tact.(I heard the new administration had to get new copies of the Constitution on hand because they couldn't salvage what was left in the shredders.)

Alberto G.: I played a very small part in the safety of our country following the attacks of 9/11.

Note: Alberto Gonzalaz diminishes his role, like Conoleeza Rice saying she only passed information along - hers was a messenger service not Condi our policy maker. Alberto G., Bush's "Fredo" doesn't want to be disbarred and go to jail so he downplays himself. He played a "very small part."

Look at this A.G. gem: "As lawyers, you provide to policymakers, an opinion on whether a certain policy which would make America safe is available to them. They then decide if this is something they would want to exercise to make America safer."

See how the sentence runs - without a breath "which would make america safe" - this is their talking point more than likely practiced by the both of these Bushites in front of a mirror and repeated twenty times each morning.

The justification for torture and war crimes was keeping America safe. Except when you torture people, and word gets out, it inflames the enemy - as many jihadis became armed and dangerous, prepared to die, just as our young joined the army after 9/11, for the same reasons, and where are they today, their arms and legs shredded their heads blown off.

How many of ours and the Iraqi mothers' husbands and children senselessly dead - so Bush could make himself look good to his Mom and Dad and the Stalinist Cheney could quad-ruple the value of his Haliburton holdings?

Jonathan Turley for special prosecutor.