Alberto In Britain

It is so surprising Alberto Gonzales would be out of the United States right now. The Attorney General was in Britain defending the administration's human rights record.

The US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, today attempted to defend his government's controversial human rights record saying the Bush administration would not send individuals to countries where "it's more likely than not" that they will be tortured.

This is from the man that wrote, ""the war on terrorism is a new kind of war, a new paradigm [that] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitation on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders some of its provisions quaint." Gonzales wrote the famous memo trying to invent a legal justification to torture detainees. The fact that Gonzales is a spokesman for America on this issue is a huge embarrassment.

Human Rights First that 45 detainees were homocides. Raw Story recently reported on a secret prison in Poland. Transport of detainees went over European air space.

MI6 officials say the two administrations then decided to fly high-value suspected terrorists to secret gulags in Eastern Europe. The CIA-operated flights would pass through the air space of a number of countries – among them Britain, Germany, Spain and Poland. European Union officials and human rights groups would later say these interrogations may have violated the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention against Torture, to which the United States and Poland are both signatories.

Contrast that with what Alberto Gonzales said.

Asked if the US would always seek the permission of a government before flying suspects through their air space on "rendition" flights to a third country, Mr Gonzales said: "The US government respects the sovereignty of every European country, including the UK.

That conflicts with past reports of countries not knowing their air space was used to transport detainees to secret prisons.

This is more serious than the U.S. Attorney firings. It shows Gonzales lacks the judgement and decency that most humans take for granted. He looks at torture as a career opportunity. People have looked at his background and can't find an issue he feels passionately about. For Gonzales this is less about the war on terrorism and all about gaining favor with Bush. (A pro-choice Bushie?) The Supreme Court is the prize. I doubt Gonzales will ever get there, but it explains his motivation.