Gonzales

I haven't had time to write something about this, but Ed Kilgore at New Donkey really says it all.

Like Ed, I think a President should be given great deference in his cabinet picks, and I too am not an absolutist on torture (don't email me on this, read Ed's comments), but here Ed sums up the problem with Alberto,

If you believe, as I do and I hope you do, that the war on terror is an ideological war in which perceptions of American values and good intentions are in the long run as important as military assets, then confirming the Poster Boy for Torture as Attorney General provides a propaganda victory for Islamic Jihadism that's potentially just as damaging as those images from Abu Ghraib. Moreover, Gonzales's confirmation will also reinforce the already dangerous impression that the United States will only obey those rules we get to set ourselves, an impression the administration finds ways to strengthen nearly every day.

I think the same applies to Condi as well.