Ashcroft, Evans resign from Cabinet

[sammy101]

Ashcroft, Evans resign from Cabinet
Officials: Attorney general will leave when successor confirmed
From John King
CNN
Tuesday, November 9, 2004 Posted: 10:28 PM EST (0328 GMT)

Commerce Secretary Don Evans, left, and Attorney General John Ashcroft are leaving the Cabinet.


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In the first signs of a second-term shakeup for the Bush administration, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans have resigned, the White House announced Tuesday evening.

Ashcroft's resignation will become effective upon confirmation of a successor, Justice Department officials said. Evans will stay into January, according to The Associated Press.

Ashcroft, a former senator and two-term governor of Missouri, has garnered criticism during his nearly four years as attorney general on issues like the Patriot Act, which backers say helps the government in its fight against terrorism and critics say infringes on civil liberties.

In July, Ashcroft released a progress report and said the Patriot Act "saves lives" and was "al Qaeda's worst nightmare." Portions of the law are set to expire in December 2005.

His confirmation hearing in January 2000 was filled with sharply divided debate. Ashcroft's critics highlighted his longstanding conservative political and religious views -- especially his anti-abortion stance.

Yet those views have also made him a favorite of many on the right, especially religious conservatives.

Eventually the Senate voted 58-42 for his confirmation -- an usually narrow margin for confirming a Cabinet official.

Ashcroft was treated for gallstone pancreatitis in March, and his recovery kept him out of the office for nearly a month. In his handwritten resignation letter, dated November 2, he told Bush the job has been "both rewarding and depleting." (Text of resignation letter)

"I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration," he said. "I believe that my energies and talents should be directed toward other challenging horizons."

In a statement from the White House, Bush said Ashcroft "has worked tirelessly to help make our country safer" and "served our nation with honor, distinction, and integrity."

"During his four years at the Department of Justice, John has transformed the department to make combating terrorism the top priority, including making sure our law enforcement officials have the tools they need to disrupt and prevent attacks," Bush said.

Evans, who served as Bush's campaign chairman in 2000, is a longtime friend and one of the president's closest advisers. In his resignation, dated Tuesday, he congratulated Bush on last week's election results but said he concluded "with deep regret that it is time for me to return home."

"It is a blessing to have served America with such an extraordinary leader and a true friend," he said. (Text of resignation letter)

In response, Bush called Evans "one of my most trusted friends and advisers" and "a valuable member of my economic team."

"Don has worked to advance economic security and prosperity for all Americans. He has worked steadfastly to make sure America continues to be the best place in the world to do business," the president said.

President Bush met with his Cabinet on Thursday and held a news conference later that day. At that time Bush said he had yet to make any decisions about replacements for any people who resigned.

"I don't know who they'll be," he said. "It's inevitable. There'll be some changes. It happens in every administration."

Bush said Thursday that he was proud of every member of the Cabinet and his staff, and that he understood that they had exhausting jobs and made many family sacrifices.

CNN's Terry Frieden contributed to this report.
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i was watching Oprah,and then breaking news popped up,and i heard this
:eek: i wasnt expectiing that at all

[Corinna]

There is lots of talk about our former Governer ( Bushes reelction manager) taking one of the jobs. We all hope as he is a good manager and got us out of a fiscal nightmare.

[RICHARD]

There ya go...

Two more jobs created by the administration.


:confused: ;) :eek: :)

[lizzielou742]

So here's the new AG.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/10/bush.cabinet/index.html

Alberto Gonzales, general counsel for Enron, now US Attorney General.

Oh yeah, and then there's this: (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/)

[...]

The Bush administration created a bold legal framework to justify this system of interrogation, according to internal government memos obtained by NEWSWEEK. What started as a carefully thought-out, if aggressive, policy of interrogation in a covert war—designed mainly for use by a handful of CIA professionals—evolved into ever-more ungoverned tactics that ended up in the hands of untrained MPs in a big, hot war. Originally, Geneva Conventions protections were stripped only from Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. But later Rumsfeld himself, impressed by the success of techniques used against Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay, seemingly set in motion a process that led to their use in Iraq, even though that war was supposed to have been governed by the Geneva Conventions. Ultimately, reservist MPs, like those at Abu Ghraib, were drawn into a system in which fear and humiliation were used to break prisoners' resistance to interrogation.

"There was a before-9/11 and an after-9/11," as Cofer Black, the onetime director of the CIA's counterterrorist unit, put it in testimony to Congress in early 2002. "After 9/11 the gloves came off." Many Americans thrilled to the martial rhetoric at the time, and agreed that Al Qaeda could not be fought according to traditional rules. But it is only now that we are learning what, precisely, it meant to take the gloves off.

The story begins in the months after September 11, when a small band of conservative lawyers within the Bush administration staked out a forward-leaning legal position. The attacks by Al Qaeda on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, these lawyers said, had plunged the country into a new kind of war. It was a conflict against a vast, outlaw, international enemy in which the rules of war, international treaties and even the Geneva Conventions did not apply. These positions were laid out in secret legal opinions drafted by lawyers from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and then endorsed by the Department of Defense and ultimately by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, according to copies of the opinions and other internal legal memos obtained by NEWSWEEK.

The Bush administration's emerging approach was that America's enemies in this war were "unlawful" combatants without rights. One Justice Department memo, written for the CIA late in the fall of 2001, put an extremely narrow interpretation on the international anti-torture convention, allowing the agency to use a whole range of techniques—including sleep deprivation, the use of phobias and the deployment of "stress factors"—in interrogating Qaeda suspects. The only clear prohibition was "causing severe physical or mental pain"—a subjective judgment that allowed for "a whole range of things in between," said one former administration official familiar with the opinion.

[...]

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/usa0604/2.htm

[...]

Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in a January 25, 2002 memorandum to President Bush, endorsed the Justice Department’s (and Rumsfeld’s) approach and urged the president to declare the Taliban forces in Afghanistan as well as al-Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. This, he said, would preserve the U.S.’s “flexibility” in the war against terrorism. Mr. Gonzales wrote that the war against terrorism, “in my judgment renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners.” Gonzales also warned that U.S. officials involved in harsh interrogation techniques could potentially be prosecuted for war crimes under U.S. law if the Conventions applied.6 Gonzales said that “it was difficult to predict with confidence” how prosecutors might apply the Geneva Conventions’ strictures against “outrages against personal dignity” and “inhuman treatment” in the future, and argued that declaring that Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections “substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution.”7

Gonzales did convey to President Bush the worries of military leaders that these policies might “undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries.”8

The Gonzales memorandum drew a strong objection the next day from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Powell argued that declaring the conventions inapplicable would “reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general.”9


[...]

So, this guy approved the torture plan for Abu Ghraib.

I just don't understand how stuff like this goes on! :mad:

[Lady's Human]

Alberto Gonzales wasn't General Counsel for Enron, he was a partner in the Law Firm that worked with Enron, and left the firm in 1995. There's a big difference between being corporate general counsel and being part of the law firm that provided the service as a PART of their business.

[lizzielou742]

Hmm, the source I had called him general counsel. I'll have to look for more sources. Thanks! :)

[Edwina's Secretary]

any "big differences" in approving torture?

Is this better than a guy who lost an election to a dead man?

[Lady's Human]

I'd discuss whether or not terrorists are covered by the Geneva convention, but PT isn't the place to discuss a 4 hour class on the Law of Land Warfare that we get every year from the JAG.

To cut to the chase, the military's interpretation of the Law of Land warfare (AKA Geneva and Hague conventions) has been from the start that if you are on the battlefield, shooting at uniformed troops, and have neither a uniform nor a Geneva Convention ID, then you are not covered by the convention. In reality, they could be summarily be tried as spies and shot, but that wouldn't play well in the press.

[Edwina's Secretary]

Gosh! I guess Colin Powell missed the class.....

[Lady's Human]

Colin Powell has been too busy trying to distance himself from his military career so he can avoid questions about My Lai.

[Logan]

Who would have been a better selection for President Bush to make than Mr. Gonzales? I truly don't know and I would like to do some research on other candidates that you all think were more qualified. I know nothing, other than what I have read here and heard on the news, about Mr. Gonzales, and not any more on the other people who were mentioned. I am truly curious about who would have been a better candidate, since obviously, John Ashcroft as not a good choice in most people's opinions.

Logan

[Lady's Human]

Regardless of who the president nominated for AG they would be ripped to shreds by one side or the other before the ink was dry on the nomination.

[Edwina's Secretary]

I don't know who would be a better candidate. However, I believe there to be many qualified candidates. Gonzales called the Geneva Convention "quaint." I find that frightening for our soldiers. Here's some info on Gonzales.... Gonzales (http://slate.msn.com/id/2109495/)

[Lady's Human]

As a soldier I have to agree with the AG. The geneva Convention was a great idea when nation was fighting nation. At a minimum, it needs to be updated to deal with NG forces on the battlefield. As it stands, if it is interpreted that terrorists have the same status as uniformed soldiers, it would make the GWOT at best far more difficult, and at worst a loss before we even got going.

[Edwina's Secretary]

He is not the Attorney General yet! There is a big difference between nominee and Attorney General.

[Lady's Human]

Pardon the presumption.

[RICHARD]

Terrorists are people too!

:confused: