Senators Clash With Nominee About Torture

President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, declined Thursday to say if he considered harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding to constitute torture or to be illegal if used on terrorism suspects.

On the second day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey went further than he had the day before in arguing that the White House had constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws enacted by Congress, especially when it came to national defense.

He suggested that both the administration’s program of eavesdropping without warrants and its use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, might be acceptable under the Constitution even if they went beyond what the law technically allowed. Mr. Mukasey said the president’s authority as commander in chief might allow him to supersede laws written by Congress.

If the Democrats are serious when they say that they oppose torture, then these comments alone should be enough for them to oppose Mukasey's nomination.

The fact that the Bush administration are torturing suspects is accepted by all but it's most fervent supporters, it is for this reason that US has sought to implement it's own reading of the Geneva Conventions, which as Dana Perino memorably stated when she was reminded that any clarification of Geneva must be done through an international court, "Which we won't be doing."

It is clear that the Bush administration are engaging in actions which every country in the world - and every US administration before this one - would regard as torture.

The questioning by the Democrats was tougher still regarding Mr. Mukasey’s views on presidential authority to order harsh interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects, including waterboarding, which was used by the C.I.A. on some of those who were captured and held in the agency’s secret prisons after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

“Is waterboarding constitutional?” Mr. Mukasey was asked by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, in one of the sharpest exchanges.

“I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” Mr. Mukasey replied. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

Mr. Whitehouse described Mr. Mukasey’s response as a “massive hedge” since the nominee refused to be drawn into a conversation about whether waterboarding amounted to torture; many lawmakers from both parties, as well as civil liberties and human rights groups, have said it is clearly a form of torture. The administration has suggested that it ended the practice after protests from Capitol Hill and elsewhere, although it has never said so explicitly.

“I mean, either it is or it isn’t,” Mr. Whitehouse continued.

Waterboarding, he said, “is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning. Is that constitutional?”

Mr. Mukasey again demurred, saying, “If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.”

Mr. Whitehouse said he was “very disappointed in that answer; I think it is purely semantic.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Mukasey replied.

Here he argues that the President can disobey "some" laws:



Here he refuses to state whether or not waterboarding is torture:

Among the Democrats, Mr. Leahy was especially critical of Mr. Mukasey, wondering aloud whether he had been pressured overnight by the White House to defend the administration’s view of its expanded powers in dealing with terrorist threats.

“In your answers yesterday, there was a very bright line on questions of torture and the ability of an executive, or inability of an executive, to ignore the law,” Mr. Leahy said. “That seems nowhere near as bright a line today, and maybe I just don’t understand.”

“I don’t know whether you received some criticism from anybody in the administration last night after your testimony,” he said, “but I sensed a difference, and a number of people here, Republican and Democratic alike, have sensed a difference.”

Mr. Mukasey insisted there had been no pressure from the White House on Wednesday, saying, “I received no criticism.”

But just watch, a man who refuses to state whether or not something as abhorrent as waterboarding constitutes torture will sail into his position. And the joke is that his position is that of chief law officer for the United States.

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Tags: Mukasey, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Waterboarding, torture, definitions of torture, geneva conventions, nominee for attorney general, confirmation hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee