Happy New Year from Alberto Gonzales

Well, there you go. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who resigned from the Bush administration 16 months ago in the midst of controversies over secret wiretapping and the politicization of the U.S. Justice Department, says he was not to blame for what went wrong during his tenure. "I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror," Gonzales said Tuesday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Gonzales said he was not responsible for administration policies that caused him to fall into disfavor and is writing a book to explain his take on things. Gonzales was roundly criticized during much of his term after the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, apparently for political reasons, in 2006 and for testifying before Congress that he didn't recall events that led up to the firings. He also was attacked for his role in trying to get his predecessor, John Ashcroft, to approve domestic wiretapping from a hospital bed in 2004. "What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said. "For some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with." Gonzales still is under investigation for alleged political meddling at Justice, the Journal said.