Bush: Gonzales is our No. 1 crime fighter.

It seems beyond belief that after this performance the White House are attempting to save the career of Alberto Gonzales.

Spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush talked with Gonzales after Thursday's hearing and believes he answered lawmakers' questions "honestly and forthrightly."

Perino added: "Hopefully people will be able to take a step back, realize that there is no credible evidence of wrongdoing, that the attorney general has apologized for how it was handled, that he has a job to do and he's been doing it very well and the president has full confidence in him."

Is she on smack? His bizarre memory loss alone is certainly evidence that he is being less than forthright. There was a meeting that he attended a mere five months ago - where it is said he decided to fire eight US Attorney's - although he claims to have no memory whatsoever of the meeting. However, he claims he can remember making the decision to fire the Attorney's, he just can't remember where he was when he made that decision, though he's fairly sure it wasn't at the meeting that he can't remember attending. However, even though he has no memory of most of this, he is sure that no wrongdoing took place.

Indeed, he used the phrase, "I can't recall" more than sixty times during the hearings.

His performance was so unbelievable that even Republicans on the Committee were calling for his head.

But we shouldn't be surprised. This is typical of Bush. We've seen all this before with Rumsfeld. People call for the resignation of a member of his government and the resignation call alone is almost certain to signal that Bush will fight to keep them. Because, according to his own uniquely childish and immature logic, Bush believes that he must show that he is "the Decider" and he will prove this by refusing to be forced to make a decision simply because other people are calling for him to do so. And he will stick to this insane logic even if it is hurting his government as he does so.

However, it appears that everyone except Bush and Gonzales have read the writing on the wall.

"Everybody at the White House . . . all think he needs to go, but the president doesn't," said a Republican who consulted the Bush team yesterday. Another White House ally said Bush and Gonzales are ignoring reality: "They're the only two people on the planet Earth who don't see it."

And yesterday the Committee were sent an anonymous letter that claims that the firing of the eight US Attorney's is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the levels this administration has gone to in order to politicise the Justice Department.

I have written enough about how bizarre I found his defence, but I'll leave it to others to flesh out how they found his performance:

Throughout the hearing, Gonzales displayed an odd dissociation from his job as head of the Justice Department, often behaving more as though he was a diligent inspector general called in to analyze what had happened rather than someone who had made things happen himself. "The fact that Mr. [David] Iglesias appeared on the [firings] list doesn't surprise me," he told Chairman Patrick Leahy, as though he'd just completed a departmental audit. When Kansan Sam Brownback asked him to explain the rationale behind Nevada U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden's dismissal, he said that "it appears there were concerns about the level of energy," like he'd come from some fact-finding staff interviews.

As the clock ticked on, Gonzales' self-transformation from Cabinet member to impartial observer threatened to become a full-blown identity crisis: "I now understand I was involved in a conversation with the president," he said at the end of a spat with Arlen Specter.

Reporters glanced around in confusion, perhaps imagining what it was like when the two different I's Gonzales had just referred to talked to each other in the privacy of his own home, one in a low voice, one in a high, squeaky one. Specter, who — like an exasperated parent — had just finished berating Gonzales for not taking his advice about how to prepare for the hearing, simply leaned back in his seat and shook his head.

Boy, the look on his face said. Have I raised a screw-up. Coming from a Republican, this look was especially bad.

His performance was, as Specter politely put it, "significantly if not totally at variance with the facts."

But the White House didn't see it that way. Indeed, Dana Perino did what this White House can't seem to stop itself from doing, and made Alberto Gonzales a major player in the War on Terror.

Perino stated, "He is our No. 1 crime fighter. He has done so much to help keep this country safe from terrorists."

I hope the country's No. 1 crime fighter remembers his role in fighting terrorism. For he appears to have forgotten almost everything else.

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Tags: Gonzales, Bush, Perino, fired US Attorney's, No. 1 crime fighter