It's a good thing that George W. Bush hasn't lost his mind, or like other things lost or missing (or unremembered) in this fouled-up administration, the Decider Long War President might not know where in the hell he is or what in the hell he’s done and is doing.
Then the Homeland would be in very big trouble!
Or...
Maybe not.
If George W. Bush lost his mind and his memory, he might function better.
The nation might recover from his horrific policies of war and peace if he no longer remembered all of the blunders, omissions and deceptions.
Of course, amnesia and ignorance are the perfect rationalizations and smoke screens for culpability.
"I don't remember."
"I can't recall."
"I don't know."
“Did I shower yesterday?”
“Let me think...yes, I might have...I'm just not sure”.
“I don't know. My recollection isn’t clear.”
Computers don't get amnesia, do they?
Computers don't lose their minds or memories, do they?
But the cancerous problems are worse than Alberto Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld or George W. Bush losing their minds and memories.
This president and this administration have committed crimes and misdemeanors.
That is why they're trying so hard to lose their minds and memories!
Impeach them now.
Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified Thursday before a Senate committee that he could not recall the details of any of the meetings he participated in over the course of two years, in which he and his staff discussed a plan to fire eight US attorneys.
"I have searched my memory," Gonzales said, in response to a question by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) about one meeting Gonzales attended in November 2006 when he discussed the firings. "I have no recollection of the meeting.... I don't remember the contents of this meeting."
Gonzales was visibly defensive as a frustrated group of bipartisan senators pounded the attorney general with some tough questions about his role in firings. Throughout the daylong hearing, Gonzales testified more than 70 times that he could not recall any part of the conversations or details of the backdoor meetings he had with White House officials or members of his staff surrounding the questionable dismissals of the US attorneys. He added that he could not recall whether he had certain conversations over the telephone or in person.
[From Gonzales Can't Recall Meetings That Led to Attorney Firings]
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t Report
19 April 2007
Bush and Cheney hired Gonzales as attorney general to carry out their plan to amass governmental power in the hands of the Executive. They knew they could count on him.
Gonzales' bona fides were well-known to his bosses. When he was counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush from 1995 to 1997, Gonzales provided his boss with "scant summaries" on capital punishment cases that "repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence," according to the Atlantic Monthly.
Gonzales prepared 57 such summaries, including one regarding the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man executed for murdering a restaurant manager. The jury was never told about his mental condition. Gonzales's three-page summary of the case for Bush mentioned only that Washington 's defense counsel's 30-page plea for clemency (which covered the mental competency issue) was rejected by the Texas parole board. Bush refused to stay executions in 56 of the 57 cases in which Gonzales wrote abbreviated memos.
The attorney general was central to the Bush-Cheney-Yoo illegal domestic surveillance program. When he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the New York Times uncovered the secret spying program, attorney general Gonzales walked in lockstep with his bosses. Gonzales would not tell the senators whether Bush had authorized other secret programs. He refused to say whether the government could wiretap purely domestic calls without a warrant, or whether he had the authority to search the first class mail of American citizens or to examine people's medical records. When Republican Senator John Cornyn asked him whether law enforcement could shoot down a plane with drugs, Gonzales said, "I'd have to think about that."
At Gonzales' confirmation hearing for attorney general, he said he wasn't sure whether torturing prisoners could be lawful. The former Texas Supreme Court justice surely knew the terms of the Convention Against Torture, a treaty ratified by the United States and therefore part of the supreme law of the land under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The convention says, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture."
Yet, as White House counsel, Gonzales had advised Bush that the Geneva Conventions, which mandate humane treatment for all captives, were "quant" and "obsolete." Gonzales' advice facilitated the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan , Iraq , Guantánamo and secret CIA prisons around the world. Gonzales had evidently done his homework. The Nazi lawyers at Nuremberg also advised their clients that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and "obsolete."
by Prof. Marjorie Cohn
Global Research
April 21, 2007
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