Mukasey On Waterboarding: ‘I Would Feel That It Was’ Torture ‘If It Were Done To Me’
Mukasey On Waterboarding: ‘I Would Feel That It Was’ Torture ‘If It Were Done To Me’
In today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey whether waterboarding is torture. “Would waterboarding be torture if it were done to you?” “I would feel that it was,” said Mukasey. He then continued to dodge the question on whether the procedure is illegal by going on a tangent and citing Cicero. Watch it:
Mukasey has consistently dodged answering whether waterboarding is torture, despite promising to quickly order a “review” of the tactic. In October, while being considered for attorney general, he stated:
If, after such a review, I determine that any technique is unlawful, I will not hesitate to so advise the president and will rescind or correct any legal opinion of the Department of Justice that supports the use of the technique.
At that time, Mukasey also admitted that he considered waterboarding to be “repugnant” on a “personal basis,” but again claimed he could not strike a “legal opinion” on the issue.
Like Mukasey, DNI Mike McConnell has also said that he personally considers waterboarding torture: “If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful! Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.” Despite his personal repulsion to the procedure, McConnell similarly backtracked a few days later, simply stating, “The United States does not engage in torture.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, Vice President Cheney’s former counsel, Shannen Coffin, said that Mukasey’s answers on waterboarding today were “nicely put.”
Transcript:
KENNEDY: In the issue, as you know, on the — waterboarding has become the worldwide symbol for America’s debate over the torture and became the centerpiece of your confirmation hearing, after you refused to take a position, whether it’s lawful. In fact, even though you claim to be opposed to torture, you refuse to say anything whatever on the crucial questions of what constitutes torture and who gets to decide the issue. It’s like saying that you’re opposed to stealing, but not quite sure whether bank robbery would qualify.
So, the courts and military tribunals have consistently agreed that waterboarding is an unlawful act of torture, but you refuse to say so. But then in a letter to the committee sent last night, you once again refused to state the obvious that waterboarding has been, continues to be an unlawful act of torture. Your letter told us that the CIA does not currently use waterboarding but the fact, that fact had already been disclosed. What your letter completely ignored is the fact that the CIA did use waterboarding and no one is being held accountable.
In your letter, you wouldn’t even commit to refuse to bring waterboarding back should the CIA want to do so. You wouldn’t take waterboarding off the table. Your letter also ignored the fact that the CIA continues to use stress positions, sleep deprivation, other techniques that are every bit as abusive as waterboarding, techniques that our own Department of Defense has rejected as illegal, immoral, ineffective, and damaging to America’s global standing and safety of our own servicemen and –women overseas.
So I won’t even bother to ask you whether waterboarding counts as torture under out laws because I know from your letter that we won’t get a straight answer, so let me ask you this: Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?
MUKASEY: I would feel that it was. There are numerous — I remember studying Latin in school, and one of the people I studied was Cicero, and Cicero, when he made speeches, would list all of the things he was going to pass over without mentioning, and then he would pass over without mentioning them, and a lot of that is in your question. You say, I am going to pass by this and not ask you about it pass by that and not ask about it.
There are numerous things I would differ with. You say waterboarding is obviously torture, and you use the example of taking something, bank robbery, obviously being stealing. That assumes the answer to the question — which is that waterboarding is in fact torture just the same way bank robbery is in fact stealing. I think there are numerous other things I would argue with.
I simply point out that this is an issue on which people of equal intelligence and equal good faith and equal vehemence have differed, and differed in this chamber, during the debate on the Military Commissions Act, when some people thought it was unnecessary, when some people thought that it obviously barred waterboarding, other people thought it was so broadly worded that it would allow anything, and there were expressions on both sides. I should not go into, because of the office that I have, the detailed way in which the department would apply general language to a particular situation, notably when I’m presented only with a question that tells me only part of what I would be asked to rule on if I were ever asked to rule on it.
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the Mukasey Rule: Do unto others, but don’t do unto me.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:48 amUmm, haven’t we been there and done this, ad nauseum?
January 30th, 2008 at 11:48 amDoes he not know that it is already illegal?
Running that Bush Clock out.
Buck Fush
January 30th, 2008 at 11:48 amCoffin says the Democrats are concerned about “torture”, as though there was no such thing and that only silly people concerned themselves with such nuances. And she thinks Mukasey is correct because it’s such a difficult and complex question.
These people are disgusting.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:48 amHe is there to cleverly avoid accountability blame and it’s offensive on every level.
He should not have a job. Neither should his “bosses”.
What a sham. What a disgrace to America.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:52 amThe only reason they can’t admit it’s torture must be because they’ve used it extensively already.
And if they admit that waterboarding is torture, then they’re previous claims that the US does not torture were lies. And we all know that this administration is completely infallible in all cases - or at least that’s what they’d like for us to believe.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:54 amMufakesy, the new Teflon Bushit.
Q&A is all well & good, but when are we going to get some ACTION!?
January 30th, 2008 at 11:55 amEMAIL SCHUMER AND GIVE HIM A BIG WET THANKYOU FOR HELPING TO INSTALL COKE BOTTLE MUKASEY.
COKEBOTTLES REMINDS ME OF ONE OF THOSE EERY DUNGEON MASTERS
January 30th, 2008 at 11:57 amWould some dumb ass Senator ask Mukasey how He’d defend his evasion (e.g. tacit support) or support for “aggressive interrogation before a war crimes tribunal at the Hague?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:01 pmAnd then, Ted Kennedy didn’t challenge, didn’t insist on a ‘real’ answer, did absolutely nothing to discredit the Bozo.
What a great American!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 30th, 2008 at 12:03 pmKennedy: “Would waterboarding be torture if it were done to you?â€
Mukasey: “I would feel that it wasâ€
You ever heard of the golden rule mr Mukasey?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:09 pmRaw Story has an exchange with Mukasey and Sen. Specter regarding telecom immunity:
Mukasey said some 40 pending lawsuits against companied that handed over reams of data on Americans to US intelligence agencies, in apparent contravention of the law, would harm national security if they were allowed to proceed.
“It would continue to put the conduct of companies front and center,” Mukasey said.
http://rawstory.com/ news/ 2007/ Mukasey_refuses_to_address_waterboarding_defends_0130.html
TPMMuckraker also has another piece of Specter’s questioning regarding the President’s abuses of Atricle II of the Constitution. Mukasey sounds flustered:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005175.php
I know, I know it’s just Specter talking the talk but he’s coming across like more of a bulldog today. Entertaining stuff if it wasn’t so depressing.
Will CSPAN be re-airing this tonight?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:11 pmShannen Coffin… what an aptly named individual for this admin and thread…
January 30th, 2008 at 12:12 pmThat’s the problem with a lot of people these days.. they think they’re better than other people for some reason. Like their time is more important than anyone else’s.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:13 pmJust Great, the new AG speaks weasel more fluently than Gonzo did
January 30th, 2008 at 12:16 pmNext, Mukasey was asked if the earth was round or flat. He replied that he personally considered it round, but was unable to offer a legal ruling on it at this time. In the past, he has promised to order a “review” on the subject, after which he would give his legal position, but this has not been done yet.
A former attorney for the Vice President said that Mukasey’s responses were “nicely put”.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:16 pmWonder how he’d feel about a good pistol whipping.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:20 pmget that guy some new dancing shoes…..he’s worn out the ones that he’s wearing.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:21 pm1. promise to order a review = pass it on to someone else
January 30th, 2008 at 12:21 pm2. “If, after such a review, I determine” = in other words, once I pass it on, I’m done with the issue and the process of review is done, case closed
3. “blah, blah, blah” = what you would like to hear but I’m not going to do, in any fashion
Nazis torture… Dictators torture…. The Bush crime family tortures…
January 30th, 2008 at 12:23 pmhey heres some good “news torture”
-=GDP (growth) only up by 0.6%=-
January 30th, 2008 at 12:26 pmPerhaps it would help him decide if we did it to him?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:28 pmFinally a Republican has the vision to push the boundaries of the familiar right-wing principle of IOKIYAR.
Mukasey is exploring the virgin terrirtory of INOKIYM: It’s NOT OK If You’re ME.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:34 pmAt least have the balls to lie and say it is not torture, scumbag.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:35 pmIs that his “legal” opinion? Isn’t he supposed to be a “legal” expert? Isn’t he supposed to serve the law and the American people first? Isn’t he sworm to serve, protect and defend our Constitution and rules of law? Waterborading is illegal now and was illegal before and during the Bush adminstration, but the Attorney General of the United States of America can say with a straight face that he would “feel” tortured if he were waterboarded, but then refuse to declare waterboarding illegal? By refusing to state that waterboarding is illegal, isn’t he is by implication trying to claim that he doesn’t believe torture is illegal? When in the history of the United States of American has torture ever been legal? When?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:36 pmAh, I think I understand Mukasey’s position on waterboarding now. It’s only torture if it’s done to “us”.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:37 pmYeah, right. He can’t figure out if waterboarding is illegal. But, strangely enough, he can figure out that what they’re doing now is “legal”.
Cheers,
January 30th, 2008 at 12:39 pmWhy don’t they just waterboard him to get him to answer yes or no? It’s not like it’s illegal or anything.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:39 pmHere’s a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives: when a liberal mind looks at a practice and decides that, if it were done to him, he would consider it torture, his impulse is to then generalize it and say that it is torture if done to anyone else as well.
A conservative is (apparently) able to compartmentalize himself away from the rest of humanity and decide that, just because HE thinks it is torture if it were done to him, doesn’t mean that it IS in fact torture.
The very essence of situational ethics.
Come to think of it, maybe compartmentalizing conservatives away from the rest of humanity is a good thing.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:41 pmIsn’t this just worrying about “water already over the fac… — umm, sorry, dam”?
Can’t we just ‘move on’?
Cheers,
January 30th, 2008 at 12:42 pmAttorney General Mike Mukasey again dodged the issue of waterboarding.
Quotable quotes from another time another place:
On closer inspection the favored Conservative scenario for torture reveals a curious conclusion. It begins: suppose we knew for certain that a certain man knows exactly where a nuclear weapon is and we also know for certain that torturing the man would reveal the information in time for us to disarm the bomb. For certain.
Interesting scenario. Very instructive. Let us tweak the scenario a bit. Suppose you hit the terror cell that planted the bomb and everyone was dead except for one small, female child. The child is a true believer who is quite certain that you are an infidel. As I understand Conservative logic, most Conservatives would torture the child.
Finally, let us note in passing that if you want torture you must vote for conservatives in both the congress and for the presidency. Only conservatives are soothed to sleep by the screams of the damned. It probably reminds them of where they will spend eternity. No liberal or progressive will torture people. Only conservatives enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on their fellow human beings—and lying about it.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:48 pmKennedy may be a big part of the beltway “establishment,” but he never seems to shy away from putting up a good fight. Go Sen. Kennedy, go!
January 30th, 2008 at 12:50 pmI never think twice about voting Kennedy when I see him on the ballot.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:55 pmI’d pay to see this.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:56 pmMan, that was as painfull as listening to Gonzo.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:19 pmJanuary 30th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Musk Rat has now made public what every enemy will use in the future. Yes our soldiers and Americans who are captured will be tortured and as Americans yell for humanity and charge others of crimes all the UN needs is to see the tape of US Attorney General Musk Rat and John Negroponte who testified that the United States of American doesn’t concider waterboarding as torture to others, yes we did it even as the President lied from day one in the Worlds face. Musk Rat is following in Gonzales’s footsteps to stall all crimes committed by the GOP and the White House. We have no Justice System in the US anymore and no honest Military leaders. Congress just passed a bill to stop Bush from making deals with Iraq, Bush went ahead and made the deals breaking the law yet again. Notice how Americans sit back and do nothing as if Bush is a true Dictator. All this talk about the next President will be to little to late. Good news for Cheney has his company Halliburton made 27 per cent profit this quarter with his 7 years of hard work, maybe the US should hire Cheney the smart business man to help with the current US recession.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:39 pmLook, the question of whether it is torture is quite simple: Why do we do it? Answer: To make people talk. Why do we think this will make them talk? Because it’s so damn terrrifying/painful. Thus, we are inflicting pain and terror for the purpose of forcing suspects to talk, which is what torture is. It’s not a matter of just how painful it is, or how you would feel about it if it were done to you or to your little sister or your grandson. It’s a question of the intent. The intent is to inflict pain in order to produce a confession. That’s torture. Either the guys we have in detention are POWs. in which case we have no right to try to force them to talk through the use of pain, or they are criminals, in which case we have no right to try to force them to talk through the use of pain. We can question them, but we can’t try to force answers out of them. Period. If we are doing things to them that we wouldn’t want done to our own service members, then it’s torture and it’s wrong.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:47 pmMayhaps if we granted the entire BushitCo family retroactive immunity, then Mucky would call it torture?? Betcha!
January 30th, 2008 at 1:55 pmObligatory reich-wing neo-nazi facist troll posting to follow:
Instead of water-boarding why not just threaten suspects that we’ll let Ted Kennedy take them for a car ride?
January 30th, 2008 at 2:00 pmWaterboarding is a technique to achieve some higher purpose. We do not torture people for the sake of torture. But waterboarding itself is an affront to the sensibilities of some people. We have to ask ourselves, what is the underlying principle that we are trying to accomplish.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:04 pmOhg
http://thefiresidepost.com/ 2008/ 01/ 31/ negotiate-technique-but-never-negotiate-principle/
Look, the question of whether it is torture is quite simple: Why do we do it? Answer: To make people talk.
Comment by Evelyn — January 30, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
well, Evelyn, “to make people talk” is the reason given for torture. But judging from the passion with which the right-wing defends the practice, I’d say that they just flat-out enjoy inflicting pain.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:04 pmAttorney General Michael Mukasey, “DON’T BOARD ME BROâ€
January 30th, 2008 at 2:42 pmMukasey is doing the Fredo Gonzales routine. He doesn’t want the criminal in charge to be angry with him for saying what he knows deep in this legally trained heart. It doesn’t make a damn if he says there is law that ok’s it, a law that makes assault legal is an insult to the rule of law. Waterboarding by any other name is a clear case of assault and Mukasey knows it but he is being asked if it’s torture so he can skate around the fact that in almost any penal code in the country if you take someone against their will and make them comply with your force and water them it’s assault at the very least. If it happened to me on the street I’d get the first cop I saw on the street and file a complaint. What is wrong with this alleged “top law enforcement officer.” This guy is just another shithead trying to get over.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:38 pmYou’d think Mukasey would have a pretty clear understanding of torture, given what he did to that logic.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:07 pm#40 Ohg Rea Tone:
Waterboarding is a technique to achieve some higher purpose. We do not torture people for the sake of torture. But waterboarding itself is an affront to the sensibilities of some people. We have to ask ourselves, what is the underlying principle that we are trying to accomplish.
Rrrrriiiggghhhttt. Some “higher purpose”. Like “Who Would Jesus Waterboard?” So, even if we assume arguendo that the folks that do this don’t start out with simple malice in mind, what really happens?
So, read Bukovsky’s article linked above, and then tell me, what is the “underlying principle”?
Cheers,
January 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm“Waterboarding is a technique to achieve some higher purpose. We do not torture people for the sake of torture.”
Tell that to the Abu Ghraib crowd. They apparently thought otherwise.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:09 pmDear George…
January 30th, 2008 at 5:57 pmSigned, delivered, I’m yours. Ahhh, and it’s great to be on the payroll!
Great comments, all.
Now, a thought-experiment: substitute a biomedical researcher for Mukasey and animal experimentation for waterboarding.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:17 pmWhy did I know without question that Mukasey would be a disappointment, to say the least? I’d more accurately call him a tool. When nominees refuse to answer questions during confirmation, they need to be excused. Have you ever gotten a job by lying (see Gonzales and Rice) or by refusing to answer?
Schumer and Feinstein are Charlie Brown Democrats, always expecting a different outcome from nominees by the same president. Isn’t that insane?
January 30th, 2008 at 10:06 pmBreaking the law and trampling on the Constitution “for a higher purpose”. Nothing epitomizes the thinking of the GOP over the last several decades than that. From Nixon to I-don’t-recall Reagan, to Bush I, and taken waaaay over the top by Bush II.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:14 amhttp://www.dailykos.com/ storyonly/ 2007/ 12/ 14/ 224525/ 42/ 744/ 422338
Justice tells Congress to halt its CIA investigation
The word hubris was invented just for this behavior.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION…WE GOTTA LEARN TA TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER AGAIN!!
“The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, I would do,†he said.
Now that’s a very interesting statement in light of what we know about the Bush Family Crime Syndicate. VERY interesting indeed.
http://www.libertyforum.org/ showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_government&Number=295876204#Post295876204
Every time Congressional Democrats failed this year to stop the Bush administration (i.e., every time they “tried”), the excuse they gave was that they “need 60 votes in the Senate” in order to get anything done. Each time Senate Republicans blocked Democratic legislation, the media helpfully explained not that Republicans were obstructing via filibuster, but rather that, in the Senate, there is a general “60-vote requirement” for everything.
How, then, can this be explained?
The Senate confirmed Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general Thursday night, approving him despite Democratic criticism that he had failed to take an unequivocal stance against the torture of terrorism detainees.
The 53-to-40 vote made Mr. Mukasey, a former federal judge, the third person to head the Justice Department during the tenure of President Bush . . . Thirty-nine Democrats and one independent [Bernie Sanders] opposed him.
—–
“Torture should not be what America stands for . . . I do not vote to allow torture,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:10 amMukasey’s position has already been compromised with that statement. Just can’t wait till all these Bush idiots are swept out of office on jJanuary 20, 2009 and into a waiting manure truck. Good riddance.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:50 am