WASHINGTON -- White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales was confirmed by the U.S. Senate yesterday as the nation's first Hispanic attorney general on a vote of 60-36, with dissenting senators saying he was unfit for the job because of his acquiescence in a Bush administration policy that they said led to the abuse of suspected terrorists.

AP file photo Alberto R. Gonzales

All of the "no" votes came from Democrats -- including West Virginia Sens. Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller -- and Democratic-leaning Independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont.

The large number of no votes for Gonzales, a former Texas Supreme Court justice and longtime Bush intimate, was reminiscent of the vote tally for President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, who was confirmed in 2001 by a 58-42 vote. But it was a departure from the Senate's longer tradition of overwhelmingly approving a president's Cabinet choices. Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton's attorney general, was confirmed unanimously, as was Dick Thornburgh, named by President Ronald Reagan. William P. Barr, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, was confirmed on a voice vote.

Democrats had faulted Gonzales for writing a memo in which he described some protections for prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions as "quaint" and "obsolete" and for not challenging a now-rescinded Justice Department memo that defined torture as pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death."

But Republicans countered that Gonzales was being unfairly linked to the notorious "torture memo" prepared in August 2002 by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. They noted that Gonzales had told the Senate Judiciary Committee that "torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration."

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., replied, "Mr. Gonzales was at the heart of the Bush administration's notorious decision to authorize our forces to commit flagrant acts of torture in the interrogation of detainees."

Republicans also suggested that Democrats were opposing Gonzales for partisan motives. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said during yesterday's closing debate that the opposition to Gonzales showed that the confirmation process has "got some serious problems.

"We have allowed the invective of partisan politics to enter into some of these debates and discussions," Santorum said, "when we should be looking at the qualifications of the person, the integrity of the person, the skills of the person, the trustworthiness of the person and whether they can do and execute the job faithfully."

Noting that Gonzales is often mentioned as a possible Bush nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, some Republicans also charged that Democrats wanted to embarrass him as a way of keeping him off the high court.

Gonzales was supported by six Democrats, including Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the party's nominee for vice president in 2000. Lieberman has been a strong supporter of the war in Iraq and, like Bush, has drawn a connection between al-Qaida terrorism and the insurgency in Iraq.