Of nannies, torture, and the nominations to governmental posts.
Nannies have political power, especially those who are illegal immigrants. They have the power to topple candidates to the highest offices in the U.S. Illegal nannies managed to end the candidacies of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, both Clinton's nominees for the Attorney General Office. Most recently, Bernard Kerik's candidacy to head the Homeland Security Office also imploded ostensibly because of an illegal nannies.
Illegal Nannies have the political influence that even politicians don't. Senators, on both sides of the aisle, don't seem to be as troubled by the fact that the Bush nominee for the Attorney General office issued memos justifying torture as a policy of the U.S. government. And it goes beyond theoretical interpretation of the international law. On January 4, 2005, the Washington Post reported that in March, 2002, the CIA sought advice on what would constitute torture "how much pain a US intelligence officer could inflict on a prisoner without violating US law outlawing torture of detainees." A meeting was convened and Gonzalez was present there. At the meeting interrogation methods with descriptive details were discussed. The Washington Post reports that Gonzales "raised no objections and without consulting military and State Department experts in the laws of torture and war, approved an August 2002 memo that gave CIA interrogators the legal blessings they sought."
Some Democrats have voiced statements that there should be certain deference to the President's choices for his cabinet appointments. They don't seem to be troubled by appointing someone who consciously sought to justify not obeying existing laws as the person responsible for enforcing laws. The Republicans, for their part, while willing to destroy the candidacies of President Clinton's nominees because of "the nanny problem," or happy to impeach Clinton for sexual peccadilloes (does any one remember the blue dress?) will of course stand by their president and will endorse the torture. They will also scream of some Democrats' nasty partisanship and may even call any opposition to Rice and Gonzalez racist (is that what Bush was alluding to in his inaugural address?). These are the trumpeted American moral values today.
Similarly, only two Democrats on the senate committee confirming the candidacy of Condolezza Rice to be the next Secretary of State dared to object to it. Only two of them were troubled enough with Rice's record, and not only questioned her boldly, but also refused to vote in support of her candidacy. Only Senators Boxer and Kerry had the courage to challenge the lies of this administration. Lies, or, at best, incompetence. And then only 12 voted against her, a low number still hailed as the highest number of NO votes since 1825. In the past few years, Rice on a number of occasions supported the White House push for invading Iraq. She asserted that the aluminum tubes found there "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs," and warned us that "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." On another occasion, she said that she was "certain to this day that this regime was a threat, that it was pursuing a nuclear weapon." In August 2003, Rice continued her argument: "Let us be very clear about why we went to war against Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein's regime posed a threat to the security of the United States and the world. This was a regime that had pursued, had used, and possessed weapons of mass destruction." And nine months after President Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein could have nuclear weapons within a year, Rice claimed ""No one said he's going to have it in a year." No WMDs were found in Iraq, of course. Now, during her confirmation hearings, Rice, in response to Senator Boxer's questions, did not balk a bit: "Now, there were lots of data points about his weapons-of-mass- destruction programs. Some were right and some were not. But what was right was that there was an unbreakable link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.... We went to war because this was the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a man against whom we had gone to war before, who threatened his neighbors, who threatened our interests, who was one of the world's most brutal dictators." Rice was upset that someone would "impugn on her integrity." If it is not a question of integrity, it is certainly a question of incompetence.
Vote on Gonzalez is a vote condoning torture. A vote for Rice was a vote condoning the workings and manipulations of this administration. Neither of them is a blank slate they both have a long record as members of this administration, we have seen what we can expect of them. It is not a question of partisanship, or loyalty, it is a moral question, or a question of "moral values," if you will, of holding those responsible for decisions made by this administration that led to disasters and, in the words of military legal experts, "fostered greater animosity toward the United States, undermined our intelligence gathering efforts, and added to the risks facing our troops serving around the world." And after that vote, let no one in the US object to the torture and illegal imprisonment of Americans anywhere else in the world. Some foreign countries, in fact, may be more than happy to use the U.S. interpretation of international laws.
Perhaps, someone should check if, by any chance, Gonzalez ever hired illegal nannies. If he did, there is a chance, and the four more years then might be less scary. Let's see what our law makers find more despicable: torture, war based on false premises, or hiring illegal nannies?