Up or down on MuKasey

26 October 2007 |permalink | email article

President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, appears closer to being confirmed by the Senate. But the major stumbling block for the retired federal judge is his evasive testimony about torture.

In what has become a classic White House stall, he declined to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee whether waterboarding is torture. “Not familiar with the subject” sounds like a distant echo of Alberto Gonzales.

Chairman Patrick Leahy has made it clear that he would not schedule a vote on the nomination until Mukasey has responded to all written questions submitted to him since his confirmation hearings.

In a letter sent to him by the ten Democrats on the panel, the letter noted that senior American military officers and lawmakers had often described waterboarding as torture.

Sen.John McCain, tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, describes waterboarding as “very exquisite torture.” 

Rudy Giuliani is being briefed on foreign policy issues about which he is ignorant by a hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers like Norman (World War IV) Podhoretz. Torture is an issue.

Will these advocates of attacking Iran dare mention the Geneva Convention?

Asked by ABC News whether he agreed with Mukasey, who he backed for a federal judgeship, on the subject of waterboarding he was similarly vague.

He didn’t rule out the technique as a form of “aggressive questioning” of terror suspects but wasn’t sure if the practice was torture. “It depends on how it’s done…It depends on who does it.”

Noted law professor Jonathan Turley, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, wrote:
“If the administration is unable to find a nominee who will denounce torture, then it should be left with an acting attorney general who will lead the department without the consent of the Senate.”

 

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