Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Irony thy name is Gonzales

Ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales penned an op/ed article in the Houston Chronicle last week discussing the increasingly violent situation in Mexico. He described his support for the White House’s border plan for Mexico though not without spinning that the “Bush Administration worked hard to provide the government of Mexico with law enforcement assets, training, and intelligence.”

The latter half of his article highlighted the need to control the flow of illegal arms across the border into Mexico. Yet it’s his views on “correctional reforms” which should raise some eyebrows:
He also said Mexico should have oral, public trials of major organized crime figures rather than having trials consist of written testimony read by a judge behind closed doors.

Doing things in private breeds corruption, he said.
That coming from one of the main backers of the controversial procedures at the Guantanamo Bay jail and who reportedly called the Geneva Conventions "obsolete.”

As we mentioned yesterday, Gonzales and five others have been named by Spanish officials in a criminal investigation regarding human rights abuses at Gitmo.

Image- BBC News (circa 2007 photo of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales)
Online Sources- Houston Chronicle, rawstory.com, The Latin Americanist, ABC News

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