The Washington Times reported today that Senate Dems are considering a filibuster for William J. [tag]Haynes[/tag]’ [tag]nomination[/tag] to the U.S. [tag]Court of Appeals[/tag] for the 4th Circuit. My first choice would be to see the Bush White House have the decency to pull the nomination. My second choice would be to see enough reasonable [tag]Senate[/tag] Republicans vote against Haynes to make the filibuster unnecessary. Barring these, a [tag]filibuster[/tag] not only seems sensible, it’s important.
If you’ve forgotten about Haynes, he’s the Pentagon’s general counsel who was directly involved in setting U.S. interrogation policies for suspected terrorist detainees and who, in 2003, oversaw a Pentagon “working group” that embraced the reasoning in a now discredited Justice Department “torture” memo. The administration’s radical legal approach to tribunals, the Geneva Conventions, and even the incarceration of U.S. citizens without counsel or judicial review? Haynes literally helped write the book.
Given the circumstances, a year ago a senior GOP Senate source told Newsweek that Haynes’ nomination to the 4th Circuit is “DOA.” And yet, here we are, a year later. Bush still wants Haynes to get a lifetime position on the appeals court bench, most Senate Republicans still want to vote to confirm him, and Senate Dems are still ready to filibuster. At least Dems are getting a little help this time.
Twenty retired military officers say they have “deep concern” about the fitness of the Defense Department’s general counsel to be a federal judge because he approved coercive techniques to interrogate terror suspects.
In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the officers urged a thorough examination of the role of the counsel, William J. Haynes II, in adopting policies “that compromised military values, ignored federal and international law and damaged America’s reputation and world leadership.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Haynes’ nomination yesterday and, predictably, most Senate Republicans expressed their support for him. But not all of them.
A key Senate Republican clashed yesterday with President Bush’s pick for a federal appeals court, taking aim at the nominee’s past support for harsh interrogation methods at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
At a Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said that Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II had pushed for the tactics over the objections of top uniformed military lawyers who considered the policy process a “sham.”
The result, Graham told reporters after the hearing, was “legal confusion” that contributed to the scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison — and the attendant courts-martial and other career damage for those held responsible.
Noting that the U.S. commander in Iraq during Abu Ghraib, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, has seen his career stall, Graham said, “The question is whether enough things went wrong on [Haynes’s] watch that he needs to be held accountable.”
And the other question is whether that accountability will block Haynes from the 4th Circuit. Graham seems, at least for now, to oppose the nomination. He told some reporters after the hearing, “Actions have consequences.” Whether Graham follows through, and/or can convince any of his Republican colleagues he’s right, remains to be seen.
I’m sure the “Gang of 14” can and will quibble over the meaning of the phrase “extraordinary circumstances,” but if Dems have any fight in them at all, there’s no way in the world they can allow a top Pentagon lawyer who helped create torture policies get confirmed to a permanent spot on one of the nation’s highest courts.
If the GOP threatens the nuclear option over this, so be it. Some fights are worth having.