Mukasey condemns torture, says he’d be independent, reads the headline of the San Francisco Chronicle. You can find dozens of other headlines like it in newspapers around the country, declaring that Michael B. Mukasey, George W. Bush’s nominee to be Attorney General, has repudiated torture.
Read the text of yesterday’s confirmation hearings for yourself. Yesterday Mukasey has only repudiated “torture” in the same George W. Bush has repudiated “torture.” George W. Bush has delivered multiple speeches repudiating “torture.” He has declared that under his administration, “torture” does not and will not happen. But he doesn’t define he means by the word “torture.” In the meantime, it has been confirmed that the U.S. Government under George W. Bush’s authorization has indeed engaged in activities that meet the legal definition of torture. Bush’s definition of torture, which he has refused to talk about with interviewers, must be a different definition than that under federal law.
In a kinder and more obvious age, when everyone could agree that “torture” equals the definition of torture under federal law, Senators could simply ask Michael Mukasey whether he repudiates torture. Mukasey could agree without specifics, and everyone could cheer. But the age we live in is neither obvious nor kind, and so we must ask more specific questions.
Michael Mukasey was only asked about waterboarding, the highly publicized U.S. government technique under the Bush administration in which a person is subjected to a simulated drowning. It’s been all over the newspapers for years. Michael Mukasey was asked only once about the specific technique of waterboarding, which meets the legal definition of torture:
Senator Lindsey Graham: But if there were evidence obtained through waterboarding, would you be comfortable with that evidence being used in a military trial?
Michael Mukasey: I don’t know what’s involved in waterboarding.
Graham interrupted Mukasey in his next sentence, and the conversation moved on.
Hearings continue today. Our U.S. Senators must do better.
