Senator Arlen Specter has inadvertently revealed that the use of torture is widespread within the federal government. Republicans have, in the past, attempted to depict the torture of prisoners, as conducted at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other, secret, prisons as isolated and uncommon.
During a hearing about the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General of the United States, Senator Specter acknowledged the problem of Mukasey’s refusal to answer the question about whether waterboarding prisoners to force them to talk is a form of torture. Nonetheless, Specter fretted that, if Mukasey answered the question, and admitted that waterboarding is torture, he would place people in the government who have been torturing people with waterboarding techniques at risk of criminal prosecution or lawsuits by those who had been tortured.
How many people in the government did Arlen Specter say would become criminally liable if Mukasey admitted that waterboarding is torture? Not just a few bad apples. Not just an isolated rogue here and there. “A lot of people” in the government would be placed at risk of prosecution as war criminals, Senator Specter said: “The facts are that an expression of an opinion by Judge Mukasey prior to becoming attorney general would put a lot of people at risk for what has happened.”
Arlen Specter has been briefed by the White House on the treatment of prisoners by the American government. So, when he says that “a lot of people” in the government are using waterboarding to torture prisoners, the revelation may have been accidental, but it isn’t just a slip of the tongue.
Senator Specter’s statement indicates that the use of torture is rampant throughout the federal government, and that Republican leadership is aware of the problem, but is doing nothing to stop it.
Why the inaction? The Republicans are more worried about protecting the criminals who are doing the torture than they are concerned with upholding their oath to defend the Constitution, including the guarantee against cruel and unusual punishments, from its domestic enemies.
(Source: International Herald Tribine, November 1, 2007)
And now, Senator Specter, the pig, announces that he will vote for Mukasey, because, of course, it’s soooo much more important to keep torture hidden than to actually stop torture, right?