As fae as being a lawyer is considered, think of Gonzo as the Sarah Palin of the legal profession. A totally empty vessel, that will bend however his boss says. I can't see the Harvard, but everything else he accomplished was under the auspeciies of King George.

That being said, Cheney's sins were commissioned, where most of Gonzo's sins were by error of omission; ie knowing the law and being his boss's puppet. Dick is evil for being too smart for his own, and especially, the country's gppd. Gonzo is evil by being a stupid puppet serving in a position way above his pay grade!

You're making the case for Gonzales as Eichmann, which would explain your sense of disgust.

Gonzo is a toady. The essential "Yes Man." He is unemployed because no law firm from the smallest family practice to the largest Wall Street firm really wants to hire a "yes man." The large Wall Street firm might want a well connected "yes man" but in Gonzo's case his only connection is George Bush. In 2009 I don't think that counts as being well connected.

How is Bush's other legal toady Harriet Miers doing?

Gonzo's service to Bush was as a toady, a "yes" man, and a sniveling coward. No wonder Bush thinks so highly of him.

I'm considerably less generous in my opinion of Gonzales, for a couple of reasons, although I still agree that Dick "Apotheosis of Evil" Cheney is worse.

First, Gonzales is trying to portray himself as passive, unwitting, helpless, what have you, but in reality he was quite an active enabler. He didn't just let things happen, he worked hard to make them happen, even if they weren't his ideas. He concocted and delivered misleading Congressional testimony, he worked Ashcroft in his hospital bed (the irony still gives me pause), he promoted people and supported efforts that even the dimmest lawyer knows contradicted history, law, and morality. He WAS an active agent, and that makes him more despicable than the pathetic puppet his current act would have us believe.

And second, his was not the only such behavior, not by a very long shot. The active enabling of others' worst ideas and impulses, which at the same time can be used to one's own benefit, is a hallmark of many of the recent disasters in US history, from the Iraq War to the financial meltdown. Gonzales is just a prominent example -- and thus a role model -- for the thousands upon thousands of "good German" functionaries in industry and government. This public display and validation of destructive behavior is yet another reason he is such a despicable character.

What IS it with Republican Attorneys General anyway? Mitchell, Meese, Gonzales -- what a lineup of chief law enforcement officers! Where did anybody ever get the idea the Republican Party is anything but a criminal gang?

i believe hannah arendt once wrote something or other about "the banality of evil."

she could have been writing abu g's biography.

Read "Eichmann in Jerusalem." Adolph Eichmann wasn't evil because he wasn't an anti-Semite...unlike many of his colleagues, Eichmann wasn't particularly a hater. But what made him EVIL was he was studiously UNTHINKING of the moral implications of his actions. He refused to consider the consequences of his actions.

That is Gonzales, to a tee. Like Eichmann, a decent middle manager, but morally vacuous.

btw, if he ever does get his book published, what's it going to be called?
i'd like to suggest "oh, i guess i really do recall."

Let them all stand trial at The Hague, their vileness can be sorted out then.

Victims are either people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or were targets of someone else's wrongdoing. Gonzales is neither of these.

If he ever had one, Gonzales sold his soul enabling Rove to politicize the DoJ to keep Republicans in the majority by criminal means, enabling Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush to use torture.

He aided and abetted criminal behavior and activities both domestically and abroad. For this, he should be charged with crimes against humanity along with Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld at The Hague, AND charged with obstruction and perversion of justice here at home.

There are a lot of people like this. In fact, such a person is probably the kind of bureaucrat the bosses LOVE. Will do the job and not care about anything else.

[content deleted]

I highly recommend John Dean's book Conservatives without Conscience which does a pretty thorough analysis of the difference between "authoritarian leaders" and "authoritarian followers" and "socially dominant" conservatives and Right Wing Authoritarians.
Very interesting, lots of "aha!" moments....and after you finish with the criminals in the Bush administration you can start to analyze your family members!

And he's writing a book. I think it was the Huffington Post who said it would be a "tell all" book. Based on the interview, you know what he's going to tell.

And don't think the corruption rests only with Republican Attorney Generals. Look at the Democratic appointments: Bert Lance, Janet Reno. The last decent Attorney General was Ramsey Clark, forty years ago, and since then a lot of effort has gone toward marginalizing and discrediting him. Don't expect Holder to be any different. As Lenny Bruce said: "The Halls of Justice -- the only justice is in the halls."

I also immediately thought of Arendt's take on Eichmann as I read this post.

Your excoriation of Gonzales' personality probably says more about you than it does about him. You didn't just turn away. You made a good try at dehumanizing him before you left.

The air of superiority was so noxious I had to google self respect and spend a grueling 15 minutes at Wiki verifying what I suspected to be
true. self respect = self esteem for most intents and purposes. Ambrose Bierce in 1911 called it an 'erroneous appeasement'. From the 70s into the 90s, it was considered the sine qua non for academic success. 'Experts' even asserted that bullies suffered from a lack of self esteem. I didn't have to wait 2 decades to know that was hogwash, I knew it right away.

Currently the self esteem concept is in disrepute. Albert Ellis 'has claimed that the philosophy of self-esteem in the last analysis is both unrealistic, illogical and self- and socially destructive – often doing more harm than good'. The concept of self-esteem has been criticized by different camps but notably by figures like Dalai Lama, Carl Rogers, Paul Tillich, Alfred Korzybski and George Carlin-wiki. Unwarranted high self esteem is a much greater problem.

If we all had high self esteem life would be far more chaotic than it is. Unless we were the grandstander, we all know people who dominated classrooms, schoolyards, boardrooms, families to the detriment of all.

"I like to watch."

So if I follow you, Michael7843853, we'd be better off if we lacked "basic self-respect"?

We should entrust law enforcement and power to those who lack basic self-respect?

We shouldn't attempt to pass judgement on politicians when they actively and consistently work to subvert that the very Constitution we charged them to uphold?

I guess I don't get your point or why you're so eager to defend Gonzales' weak character.

As many here have correctly pointed out, Alberto Gonzales was that most dangerous of men in a position of authority - a spineless, colourless placeholder who was so moved by loyalty to the unscrupulous scofflaws who put him there that he would rubber-stamp anything put in front of him. His defense during his appearance to answer for his behaviour was by turns reminiscent of the Nuremberg trials ("I was only following orders") and an episode of "Blackadder" ("Deny everything!!").

The Bush administration was as much a mass hysteria as was the Dreyfuss affair, and an awful lot of people must be shaking their heads in disbelief at their own stupidity. Fortunately, they'll be reminded of it regularly in the next few years as they see how brutally difficult it is to undo the malfeasance. There's nothing like constantly replaying the video of how you shit your pants when you were drunk to keep you from doing it again.

Here's a tip, America - if you want a reputation as a nation of informed, thinking citizens, never do anything like that again.

Michael7843853

Alberto Gonzales allowed the political hacks to politicize the department of justice. He never once took action to protect the integrity of his department or of justice in America. When he announced that he couldn't remember this or couldn't recall that he was saying to the world that he was either a complete dolt or utterly unwilling to tell the American people the truth about the evil he had allowed.

Maybe in Texas the ideal is that justice is political and available only to the highest bidder, but in the rest of America justice is supposed to be apolitical. In the rest of America the ideal is that people aren't going to be prosecuted and imprisoned for their political beliefs. That ideal is part of the fabric that holds American society together.

He claims that he can't be responsible for the bad acts of his employees. Sorry, he was in charge. It was his department. He established the tone. If he didn't explicitly approve of their bad acts, he sure as hell didn't work very hard to stop them. That was his job.

The problem is that Gonzo has never been committed to the Rule of Law. He has only been concerned about the Rule of Bush.

You can defend him all you want but Gonzales is still a contemptible creature who doesn't deserve respect.

He considered the problems around him, weighed various responses, chose some of the most abhorrent and disastrous options available, and bent the administration to his will.

As far as Cheney is concerned, there was never a doubt he was doing the 'right' thing. He did not consciously pick the most abhorrent and disastrous options available. He had/has no problem with those choices; hence there is no reason for him to apologize (In his opinion)

That goes along with what Michael was trying to explain in regards to self respect ... Cheney has tooooooo much of a sense of self-respect.. and when you put that together with the "authoritarian" streak... (Liking to be in charge) you've got the perfect combination of someone who thinks he alone has ALL the 'correct' answers.

Gonzales has some of that, on a secondary level. First and foremost he did what he was told by Bush/Cheney/Addington and then thanks to his position of power, he was able to instruct the 'underlings' on how to proceed.

well, let us see if we can flesh this out in some greater detail.

first, let us remove the iraq invasion filter.

now, add to the soup the invasions of korea, vietnam, the lebanon, grenada, panama, angola. and the creation of the fascist regimes in venezuela, haiti, brasil, chile, uruguay, paraguay, salvador, honduras, nicaragua, the dominican republic,indonesia, timor, borneo, etc ad infinitum.

abu is a part of a long chain of fascist bastids. nothing new, here. let us recall some of them...dean acheson. foster dulles. allen dulles. bob mcnamara. mac bundy. henry kissinger. zbig breZinski. ollie north. bud mcfarland. rich secord. dick helms. bill casey. john mccone. john mccloy. bobbie kennedy. his brother, jack. lbj.
ike. gerry. jimmy. ronnie. george hw bush. bill clinton. al gore. bill colby. james jesus angleton.

no, abu and his bosses are members of a long chain of gangsterism. the real record of the usa that so many want to ignore or deny. thinking that abu and this recent gang is something new, unprecedented.

well, it ain't.

I wasn't defending Gonzales' actions or lack thereof, I was taking issue with Hilzoy's attack on Gonzales' mien. Not everyone is or wants to be a dynamo. Hilzoy, in this article, is more concerned with Gonzales' lack of swagger than he is with torture or secrecy. Not everyone is entertaining. That doesn't make them less human.

Hilzoy, in this article, is more concerned with Gonzales' lack of swagger than he is with torture or secrecy. Not everyone is entertaining. That doesn't make them less human.

There's a reason other people in the thread immediately associated Gonzales with Adolf Eichmann, which is, I think, the association that hilzoy was aiming for. Eichmann wasn't a horrible, evil monster, either. He was just a guy doing his job, like Gonzales was a guy doing his job. Except that Eichmann's job was to figure out how to kill 12 million "undesirables" (6 million of them Jews) in the most efficient way possible.

In short, the likes of Dick Cheney make apocalyptic movies more credible.

When I was younger I would watch those sort of things and wonder, why the fuck would anyone want to destroy the world?! It'd be worthless once destroyed and rendered a wasteland!

But then Dick Cheney proves that people are capable of the most absurd and forceful wills.

I don't see why Gonzales is any less reprehensible. Maybe the usual PC lib taboo against criticizing anyone of color. Didn't he personally come up with wisdom such as:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/24/MNGDONO11O1.DTL
"One of the Bush administration's most far-reaching assertions of government power was revealed quietly last week when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified that habeas corpus -- the right to go to federal court and challenge one's imprisonment -- is not protected by the Constitution."

Just like the tactics used by Nazi Germans in their rise to power, members of the Republican Party today use the same "victim" card over and over again, claiming that they are the true and only "victims" even as they victimize everyone else right and left.

Everything that the Bush administration has done over the past eight years and what Republicans have done for decades revolves around this "victim" mentality which is used to justify whatever underhanded, greedy, selfish or criminal act the Republican "victim" commits.

Corporate Republicans were "victims" of excessive government regulation involving banking and investment firms (i.e., regulations that got in the way of their making a profit), so these regulations had to go or be watered down...leading to the ongoing financial meltdown and destruction of our nation's economy, rising unemployment, small businesses failing, home foreclosures, children starving.

One can make a list of all those things that Corportate Republican "victims" view as getting in their way (i.e. impede their making a profit): OSHA, consumer protection lawsuits, every federal agency with a mandate to protect U.S. citizens from greed and corruption, SEC, FDA, EPA, FERC, DOJ, etc. etc..

Ah, but there are several wings of the Republican wing-nut "victim" parade.

Racist Republicans who view themselves to be "victims" of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, or any act that acknowledges the inherent and inalienable equality of all U.S. citizens under the law. Thus, what happened at the DOJ and what has happened to our federal judiciary with racist Republican "victims" in the Bush administration packing our federal judiciary (and Supreme Court) with a bunch of fellow racist Republican "victims."

Evangelical Republicans who view themselves as being the "victim" of the U.S. Constitution and one "liberal" judicial ruling after another that maintains (or used to maintain) the wall separating church and state, that keeps religion out of politics and politics out of religion as much as possible.

Neo-con Republican "victims" in the Bush administration viewing the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Judiciary as "victimizing" them and their mad quest for a "permanent Republican majority" and an unassailable "unitary executive"...leading to record numbers of signing statements by Bush, trashing of the U.S. Constitution, rampant extra-legal (criminal) acts, and now an attempt to cover-up, hide all that they've been doing, while claiming that all that they did was for good and honorable purposes, righteous purposes...because, you know, they're all "victims"...just like the Nazis in pre-WW II viewed themselves as "victims"..."victims" of the Communists, of Jews, of homosexuals, of blacks, or everyone that the Nazi "victims" viewed as being inferior to their vastly greater superiority, giving the Nazi "victims" (in their own minds) the right to "victimize" all others.

Hey, just watch Bill O'Reilly and his yearly War on Christmas crusade to see what a Republican "victim" looks, acts and talks like.

This is the Bush legacy meme. Nothing was done on purpose. All the Republican "victims" over the past eight years were just "victims" of circumstances, just "victims" of what no one would have ever imagined would happen or saw coming, nothing pro-active or intentional. There was no premeditation, nor any malice aforethought, just Republican "victims" doing their job to the best of their ability with the illegal warrantless wiretapping, the intelligence failure before 9/11, the intelligence failure before the Iraq War, the intelligence failure after the start of the Iraq War, Katrina, tainted food and toys, Wall Street meltdown, states going bust, outing of a covert CIA agent, snubbing of congressional subpoenas, politicizing of the DOJ (and all other federal agencies), illegal proselytizing on the Air Force Academy campus, countless deaths of men, women and children around the world and inside the U.S....just happening.

In other words, people with a "victim" mentality always use their self-ascribed "victimhood" to "victimize" everyone else...whether that person with a "victim" mentality is a serial killer or a lone gunman blowing away innocent bystanders, or the leaders of a political movement or of religious sects. These conservative "victims" always justify what they do based on the same specious arguments, even as they unleash horror upon horror on those around them...because the ultimate goal of all conservative "victims" of whatever ilk is revenge, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth...and to hell with whomever has to clean up afterward.

If you wish to make Gonzo an agent in his own heinous criminality, then it can easily be accomplished---with a tiny room, an ample supply of water, a large coil of 8-gauge copper wire, and a three-phase generator usually found in stock at any big-box building supply center.

You can get someone to perform all sorts of tricks when they've been turned into a human electromagnet, and find themselves "offered the opportunity" to be used as a living experiment regarding the reaction of biological tissue to the combined effects of multi-sourced AC amperage and "baptism by immersion."

Yes---there will be those who find even the mere suggestion of such treatment obscene; perhaps even beyond the obscene---but if the Cheneys and Gonzos of today are allowed to drift from the grasp of a Justice that metes out brutality in equal measure for the brutalities of their actions, then the old adage, "Those who fail to remember History are doomed to repeat It" will, indeed, come to pass as future generations are shown, through the hydra-like hissings of the GOPer noise machine that these criminals clearly committed no wrong.

Personally, were these two suddenly attacked and devoured alive by a pack of vicious, half-starved feral pit bulls, my sympathies would be for the dogs that find themselves so desperately hungry as to find it necessary to consume such rancid fare---and not for the "unworthy dogs" that were summarily consumed....

The upper level of the Bush administration, in retrospect, was and is made up of a group of people with serious psychiatric disorders, all feeding off of one another's psychoses.

But that's the point.That's how he got the job in the first place.
After all he had worked in the same environment previously.
Fed well, tummy rubbed and stroked when needed.
Why would he question the trainer?
If he had that personality he would never have been given a big bone.
He probably still doesn't know what he did (wrong).
If he thinks about that much.

Rather than "toady", the phrase that came to my mind was "political sex slave".