The International Herald Tribune reports:
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigns
WACO, Texas: Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. He is expected to announce the decision to reporters at 10:30 Eastern time this morning in Washington.
Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted his resignation to President George W. Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said.
This is that Alberto R. Gonzales who chaired legal consulations with the White House regarding the extent of torture that was permissible in order to extract information from suspects in the “war on terror” (and also crafted dubious legal loopholes so that the President and his men would not fall under the scope of any prosecution for war crimes). This is the man who lovingly considered the utilitarian greater good of US citizens by advocating the use of “waterboarding” and other torture techniques (too gruesome to describe here). And this is the man who, under the auspices of GW Bush (and his Hegelian administration) suspended the right of habeaus corpus (Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, etc.), championed the “Patriot Act” abomination, encouraged the repeal of the use of US miltary against its own citizens, banged the drum for federal wiretapping on US citizens, and so on.
I am glad he is going, though I would certainly feel better if he were brought up on charges and faced the prospect of sitting in a cell in Guantanamo Bay for the rest of his life.