Bush: No attorney general if not Mukasey
President Bush is insisting it's his way or the highway over the appointment of Mukasey as the US Attorney General.
Apart from the crude attempt to blame the Democrats for leaving the Justice Department leaderless during "a time of war", think about what Bush is saying."If the Senate Judiciary Committee were to block Judge Mukasey on these grounds, they would set a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee for attorney general," Bush said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
"That would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war," the president said.
Asking that the US Attorney General state that waterboarding is torture is setting " a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee".
Bush is saying that any nominee who attempts to put any limits on the his regime's disgraceful interrogation techniques would not be a "responsible" nominee.
The Democrats, thankfully, aren't buying it:
It really says something about the way the Bush administration refuse to have any limits placed on their behaviour that the president can argue publicly that asking a proposed Attorney General to say that waterboarding constitutes torture sets "a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee for attorney general."More Senate Democrats announced their opposition to Mukasey. Most cited his refusal to say whether waterboarding, an interrogation technique that uses the threat of drowning to elicit answers, amounts to torture and thus is illegal under constitutional, domestic and international law.
The Senate Judiciary Committee plans a test vote Tuesday on the nomination. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., became the fourth of 10 Democrats on the 19-member committee to say he will vote against advancing the nomination to the full Senate.
Kennedy said Mukasey's unwillingness to give a definitive answer on the torture question increased the chances that the technique could be used against U.S. troops.
"I therefore intend to oppose this nomination," Kennedy said in the full Senate. "Judge Mukasey appears to be a careful, conscientious and intelligent lawyer and he has served our country honorably for many years. But those qualities are not enough for this critical position at this critical time."
Democratic Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Dick Durbin of Illinois said this week they will vote "no" in committee.
As torture is illegal I would have thought that having an Attorney General who understands what is legal and what is not would be a prerequisite to being able to competently fulfil his duties. But that's not the way the President sees it. Any prospective Attorney General who decides that waterboarding is illegal would not be a "responsible" enough person to hold the office.
I mean this isn't rocket science:
During World War II, Japanese soldiers used water-boarding against civilian detainees and U.S. military POWs -- and were later prosecuted for this by U.S. military tribunals.The US have already prosecuted Japanese soldiers for using this very technique so either they are have wrongly prosecuted people for this barbaric act or they accept that waterboarding is illegal. Which is it? In terms of the difficult legal questions facing an Attorney General this is amongst the easiest he will ever have to answer. And yet Bush feels it would be irresponsible for him to do so.
Bush summoned journalists to the Oval office to complain about this delay in Mukasey's confirmation.
Without saying whether interrogators use waterboarding, Bush said, "The American people must know that whatever techniques we use are within the law."
Asked whether he considers waterboarding legal, Bush replied, "I'm not going to talk about techniques. There's an enemy out there."
So the president himself refuses to say whether or not waterboarding constitutes torture, offering the bizarre defence that to rule out certain techniques as illegal is somehow to aid the enemy. By this logic the President would also be unable to say whether removing people's fingernails with pliers constitutes torture as that too would be making the enemy aware of your techniques.
So Bush wants us all to know that the US does not torture whilst refusing to define what he means by the word torture. There are many of us who think that Bush has very good reason for this act of linguistic gymnastics; but it leaves the US without honour, and it is responsible - as much as any other act during this arrogant and failed presidency - for the catastrophic drop in America's standing in the world during the last seven years.
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