CE Week #10: “Mukasey’s ignorance indefensible”
Stephen Winn
Kansas City Star
November 3, 2007
Last month, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general claimed improbable ignorance about the brutal interrogation procedure known as “waterboarding.” And since he supposedly knew so little about it, Michael Mukasey told irritated lawmakers at a confirmation hearing on Oct. 18, he could not say whether it amounted to torture.
In fact, he piously declared, it would be irresponsible for him to offer an opinion.
The most charitable explanation for this performance is that Mukasey is a profoundly incurious man.
Waterboarding, after all, has been much in the news – for years. And right at the center of many of those news stories has been Alberto Gonzales, the very man for whom Mukasey now offers himself as a suitable successor.
So even if Mukasey had never developed an interest in this controversy before he was nominated for attorney general, what’s his excuse for failing to get up to speed once he knew he was headed for a confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill?
Mukasey had to know he would be asked about waterboarding, a practice that the CIA reportedly used at least through 2005.
In the Oct. 18 hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, tried his best to help out the ostensibly befuddled nominee by explaining what the technique involves:
“Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding, which 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?”
(My only quibble with that wording is the phrase “simulate the feeling,” which is understated. The victims are in fact drowning – they are sucking in water rather than oxygen – and would presumably die if that continued for long without a break.)
It seems ridiculous to say that this treatment doesn’t amount to torture.
Certainly there is no doubt about this in the mind of Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate who suffered torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam:
“Anyone who says they don’t know if waterboarding is torture or not has no experience in the conduct of warfare and national security,” McCain said recently.
In the hearing, though, Mukasey played dumb even after he had the procedure spelled out for him: “If it amounts to torture,” he said, “it is not constitutional.”
Note the wiggle word “if.” It leaves open precisely the question that Mukasey was being asked.
Whitehouse pronounced himself “very disappointed in that answer.” It was, the senator said, “purely semantic.”
“I’m sorry,” Mukasey replied.
Not sorry enough.
The true test of an apology is whether the offender actually does anything to remedy the offense. And on Tuesday, Mukasey issued a written response to lawmakers’ questions that merely offered more evasions.
He did say that waterboarding was “on a personal basis, repugnant to me.” But he refused to acknowledge that this repugnant activity was in fact torture. Instead, there were just more meaningless semantics: “Hypotheticals are different from real life.”
He said he would need more briefings and so forth.
The torture issue now appears to be holding up his confirmation. The nominee has had two weeks to learn all he needs to know. By now he should recognize that such interrogation tactics violate federal law, international human rights standards and traditional American values.
Until he’s figured that out, it would be irresponsible for members of Congress to confirm him as the next attorney general.
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He did say that water boarding was “on a personal basis, repugnant to me.”
–Of course waterboarding is repugnant to him, its repugnant to everyone. Doesn’t “repugnant” activities constitute as cruel and inhuman activities?
“If it amounts to torture,” he said, “it is not constitutional.”
–Of course torture is not constitutional why does he even feel necessary to say that fact.
Anyone is better than Alberto Gonzales. Or are they? A interesting article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/opinion/06schumer.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin suggested, that “Should we reject Judge Mukasey, President Bush has said he would install an acting, caretaker attorney general who could serve for the rest of his term without the advice and consent of the Senate. To accept such an unaccountable attorney general, I believe, would be to surrender the department to the extreme ideology of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington. All the work we did to pressure Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign would be undone in a moment.”
This could be worse than Alberto. I oppose waterboarding. It is no doubt in my mind torture. But, if this scenario is true…I would rather have this man who is “not informed enough to speak on torture.” Rather than Bush’s “acting caretaker.” Let it be known that I have and always will believe that Waterboarding is torture.
As much as we’d all like to believe that the position of “U.S. Attorney General” should arguably be the most apolitical post of them all, the current partisan environment in Washington DC shouldn’t leave us surprised at his answer about waterboarding. The AG job is certainly a political appointment leaving the appointee beholding to the President and his overall agenda. Anyone who believes an appointee could be charged with simply upholding the constitution is naive. Gonzales was pressured to leave the post in part because of his adherence to promoting the policies of the current administration. Had it not been for the firing of many U.S. Attorneys, he would most likely still be in the position handing out rulings, authorizing, and even defending, practices like waterboarding. As yet another appointee of this administration, it should come as no surprise that Mukasey would offer a very vague and ambiguous answer on this topic. His careful and consistent skirting of the question allows him to be true to his future boss, yet it doesn’t give the Senate firm evidence that he supports the practice and shouldn’t be confirmed. In other words, he answered like a true politician. I find it deeply troubling that a nominee for this position would try to qualify and imply that there are any circumstances in which this practice could be somehow misunderstood. If he doesn’t know instinctively that this is torture, he is certainly not the person for this job. While most of the individuals subjected to this treatment haven’t be American citizens (at least I hope not), the Constitution he is charged with defending speaks to the rights of all men.