"We worked very hard to establish ground rules and parameters about how to deal with terrorists."
Or even sometimes when they weren't....
It was hard work going down the DoJ OLC pecking order until Gonzo could find a sycophant like Professor Yoo. Once he found him, David Addington had to test Yoo for loyalty on Cheney's desk while the Boss watched.

He's publicly defining Holder's ground rules as limiting any prosecution to interrogators who went beyond the guidelines issued by the White House and his DOJ. That's simply in his self interest, because it implies that the torture guidelines themselves were legal. He's only covering his own butt and trying to box Holder in.

First, Gonzo's career is on thin ice, so as a lawyer he has to (finally) occasionally say something along the lines of, oh, maybe, let's follow the law.
Second, special prosecutors tend to have their own egos, and therefore agendas to follow once unleashed. LOTS of cases started out as limited investigations, but once started could not be constrained.
Third, I believe the chronology has already been created showing that torture practices started BEFORE the offensive DoJ briefs were signed. That begs the question who authorized that behavior, and without Cheney and Addington controlling the investigation, the investigators will quickly rat out the higher-ups that directed their actions. The CIA memos already document that EVERY action involving the detainees were being monitored closely and directed from above. Eventually, we may get to Cheney, red-faced in a witness stand, snarling "You can't handle the truth!" right before he's arrested and read his rights for committing war crimes.

Gonzales: We worked very hard to establish ground rules and parameters about how to deal with terrorists.

He still can't bring himself to say 'suspects.' That alone pretty much disqualifies him from being taken seriously.

He did what??? What did he setup again??

Here we have a guy who was one of the Governor/President's best friends, a lawyer who became Attorney General of the U. S. who, upon leaving Government and Bush's side, can't even get a decent job.

Maybe this venture into the public arena again is a sign that Gonzo may be writing a book?

JNaqarya brings up Watergate which is an excellent precedent.

I recently found the Walter Karp essay on Watergate. Karp has been dead for almost twenty years, so the essay is not written as a lesson on parallels to the Bush administration. Karp was an editor of Harper's and Lewis Lapham's right hand guy.

Karp details the stalling and excuses of the Democratic Party hacks to let Watergate go down the memory hole. If one did a search-and-replace within the article and replaced "Nixon" with "Bush" it is really stunning how fresh the article would be. Partly because Karp was drawing supportable conclusions which were unthinkable thoughts both now and then. Like maybe the Democratic Party hacks and the Republican hacks had more in common with each other than with reformers within their own parties.

I could abstract Karp's piece but it is available online if one googles "Watergate" Karp.

I think Karp was our greatest political analyst and Bill Moyers, Christopher Hitchens, Hannah Arendt and Greil Marcus are also fans of Karp.