That’s the only way I can summarize former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ recent interview with NPR.
He said he failed to properly oversee his department’s push to fire nine U.S. attorneys in 2006, an effort that critics claimed was heavily influenced by the Bush White House and its political guru, Karl Rove. “No question, I should have been more engaged in that process,” Gonzales told Martin.
Gee, ya think?
Then Gonzales turned around and blamed it on being let down by his people.
But he also suggested that he had been a victim of decisions made by his subordinates. “I deeply regret some of the decisions made by my staff,” he said, referring directly to former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who resigned over the controversy after telling a Senate committee that the attorney firings were performance-related.
I guess he never heard of the “buck stops here” theory of governance.
But he frequently returned to what has become his recent coming-out theme: that he has been targeted by critics of the Bush administration’s most controversial policies — from torture policies that violate the Geneva Conventions to secret surveillance of citizens — because of his close relationship with the president. And that Washington is a “difficult town, a mean-spirited town.”
“Sometimes people identify someone to target. That’s what happened to me,” said Gonzales, who served as President Bush’s White House counsel before becoming attorney general in 2005, replacing John Ashcroft.
“I’m not whining,” he said. “It comes with the job.”
If you make a bunch of complaints about “mean-spiritedness,” then have to say you’re not whining — you’re whining.
As White House counsel in 2004, Gonzales was involved in what has become one of the most well-known stories to emerge from the annals of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism. During Senate testimony in early 2007, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said that Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card paid a late-night hospital visit to ailing Attorney General Ashcroft to get his signature on a secret government eavesdropping program.
Comey, who objected to the policy and to approaching a very sick Ashcroft, testified that he raced to the hospital to intervene — successfully, as it turned out.
Gonzales told Martin that he had no regrets about the incident.
“Neither Andy nor I would have gone there to take advantage of somebody who was sick,” Gonzales said. “We were sent there on behalf of the president of the United States.”
Obviously Gonzales was let down by his superior, too.
Gonzales said he was “disappointed” that Comey did not inform the Justice Department or the White House about his plan to testify about the incident. And he was unmoved by the fact that top justice officials had threatened to resign en masse over the hospital visit.
“Lawyers often disagree about important legal issues,” he said.
Yeah, those wacky lawyers, always disagreeing about important legal issues. Can’t live with ’em, can’t fire ’em fast enough.
He provided a word of caution to Obama’s attorney general nominee, Eric Holder, who last week testified that he believes that the interrogation practice of waterboarding — controlled drowning — is torture.
“One needs to be careful in making a blanket pronouncement like that,” Gonzales said, suggesting that it might affect the “morale and dedication” of intelligence officials and lawyers who are attempting to make cases against terrorism suspects.
Yeah, you wouldn’t want to harm the morale of folks by telling them that what they’ve been doing is, y’know, wrong. Great leadership there …
He said people he knows at the CIA have told him that agents there “no longer have any interest in doing anything controversial.” And that, Gonzales asserted, means they “won’t be doing what they need to be doing” to protect the country.
Well, I guess that means they’re not dedicated enough to the nation’s safety, or not certain enough that it’s the only way to stop a “ticking time bomb.” Pansies.
“I’m not sure how productive it is to lament about things that went wrong,” he said. “Maybe it was inevitable.” After all, he said, he was making controversial decisions during a historic period. “I take comfort in knowing I did the very best I could.”
You’re whining again, Alberto …