Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiWASHINGTON (AFP) - US Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Wednesday to define waterboarding as illegal torture, even while admitting that if he underwent the interrogation technique that he would "feel" it is torture.
Fending off pressure in a Senate Justice Committee hearing to categorically call waterboarding, which simulates drowning, as torture under US law, the top US legal official suggested that under certain conditions it could be legal, and said that learned people could disagree on the issue.
"I don't think it would be appropriate for me to pass definitive judgement on the technique's legality," he said.
"There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit waterboarding's use. Other circumstances would present a far closer question."
In his first testimony to the committee since becoming attorney general on November 9, Mukasey said that torture is illegal under US statutes, but that waterboarding is not definitively covered by those statutes.
"There is a statute which says it is a relative issue," Mukasey said to questioning by Senator Joe Biden.
He also said that the Central Intelligence Agency does not now use waterboarding and that the technique is "currently" not approved for its interrogation program.
However, he declined to say whether it had been used in the past.
"I am not authorized to talk about what the CIA has done in the past," he told the Senate panel.
Senators were adamant that it is torture, with committee head Patrick Leahy insisting that waterboarding "has been recognized as torture for the last 500 years."
"Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?" Senator Ted Kennedy asked Mukasey.
"I would feel it was," Mukasey said, while insisting that that does not constitute a legal opinion.
"It's like saying you are opposed to stealing but aren't sure if bank robbery would qualify," Kennedy said.
The hearing renewed pressure on the administration of President George W. Bush to categorically ban waterboarding and other interrogation techniques as torture.
As Mukasey testified, seven women sat in the audience wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods resembling those of the US war on terror prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and waved signs saying "I will not be silent" and "No torture."
Leahy said that the CIA has used the technique in the recent past, an assertion implicitly confirmed by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who was the US spy chief from 2005 to 2007, in a National Journal interview Monday.
"We've taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years," Negroponte told the magazine.
Mukasey insisted that, based on briefings he has received since he became attorney general, that the CIA at the moment is not authorized to use the method in its interrogations.
But he said he would not make a categorical statement on it because he did not want to signal to US enemies what they would face in US hands.
"Any answer that I could give could have the effect of articulating publicly and to our adversaries the limits and the contours of generally worded laws that define the limits of a highly classified interrogation program," he said.
The issue was central to the committee's hearings late last year on Mukasey's nomination to head the Justice Department.
At the time he declined to answer questions on it, saying he had not been briefed on CIA practices or the Bush administration's legal reasonings.
© 2008 Agence France Presse
32 Comments so far
Show AllThe United States is indeed a sick country, and for us in Africa, the middle east and Asia, it is like an elephant gone mad in a field full of ants. We are the ants and we are getting trampled. Significantly all wars after World War II have occurred in Third World countries, and our people have bee subjected to bombing, chemical warfare, nuclear warfare (Hiroshima and Nagasaki and now depleted plutonium tipped shells in Iraq), torture and abuse. Iraq's oil has been turned int rivers of blood.
We in the Third World have long been used to what Naomi Klein calls 'shock treatment.' Waterboarding and all other forms of torture are but the individual expression of shock treatment which is practised on entire countries and regions by the USA.
Superpower inhumanity towards and brutalization of our people must come to an end. Ultimately the abuse your government metes out to us will be meted out to you as well, by your own government. US agencies such as the CIA and your army are honing repression in the Third World which will eventually be visited on Americans.
We are also getting fed up with the contention the the USA is 'defending itself' by invading small countries thousands of miles from its own borders.
Ants are too numerous to count and they will eventually overcome the elephant. Remember Vietnam?
What's with the focus on waterboarding anyway?
The US holds naked prisoners in freezing weather. Do a test. Go aside right now naked and stand there for 6 hours. Torture?
The US keeps people awake for days at a time. Try that. Get someone to wake you up every time you fall asleep for 4 days. Torture?
The US plays loud music 24 hours a day, keeps people in the light or dark so they are disoriented, ties them up in uncomfortable positions for hours and hours. Torture?
Some of the above are actually joked about by sick corporate media spokespersons. This is a sick country.
I think the focus on waterboarding is to make it seem as if only nearly drowning someone could be (or might not be) torture.
END??? Bush and Cheney are just getting warmed up.
Another spineless prick doing Bush's bidding. Where will it all end!
The Senate Justice Committee needs to waterboard US Attorney General Michael Mukasey just to get a streight answer.
Such a sweetheart! Waterboarding would be torture if it were done to but not if it were done by this orthodox Jew.
Why does he suppose it is banned in the Geneva Conventions? That too, must be another piece of paper and this country is above it.
Awww, it's just good clean fun and adventurous. Water cleans, ya know. It's kinda like snow-boarding, only before the water gets frozen. The U.S. is only having good clean fun.
If you flip the pin over, is there a flag of israel? That would be cost effective when visits his real country.
Mukasey is a chickeshit for not going for the waterboarding treatment voluntarily. Maybe the rest of us are chickeshit liberals for not making sure he finds out what it's like? Too busy being entertained by the end of our humanity and compassion for others?
Whats torture about being tied to a hard bench, having a bag pulled over your head and then water being poured over you?
EVERYTHING, until Bush, Cheny and Mukasey decide to prove it is fine by volunteering to undergo it like the prisoners on live TV.
If they still claim its not torture at least we get some entertainment out of it.
They are all crazy!!!!!!!
This language reminds me of when the Clinton administration was weasling out of its responsibility under the Genocide Convention by describing events as "tantamount to genocide."
Waterboarding, stress positions and other US methods have long been held by both US and international courts to be torture. Mukasey's lack of moral courage, malfeasance and nonfeasance are disgusting, but hardly surprising.
Good points ~CDFORME~ but if questioned about the Constitutional ammendment, Vlll, this double talker Mukasey would reply to that by saying something like:
"Well yes Senator, we do waterboard some prisoners, but it cannot legally be referred to as cruel and unusual punishment. __ You see, we don't PUNISH prisoners, __ when we question them. Now if we punished a prisoner for breaking a rule and waterboarded them for the infraction, then indded, I would call that cruel and unusual punishment and it would be illegal."
"Well sir, isn't waterboarding while questioning a prisoner torture, wouldn't you define that as punishmement?"
"I cannot give a legal opinion on that question Senator, as I've personlly never been waterboarded. I repeat, we do not punish prisoners, we do question them?"
"Thank you Mr. Mukasey, I have no further questions."
Wow! There's a lot of contempt for the law here!
TORTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is so far beyond my brains ability to comprehend just what in the hell happened to this country under bush et al. We constantly have our three tiered system of government undermined and those responsible and complicit ergo as responsible. This means the entire administration, most of the Judiciary, Senate and House. WTF, he refuses, REFUSES? I REFUSE to allow him to REFUSE. He MUST by , this is going to sound lame, is lame, 'law' answer that damn question, now. Make the arrogant supporter of Zionists GTFO if he REFUSES. What the hell, the Senate Judiciary says "You WILL answer the question, we are the Senate Judiciary and answer it NOW! Refuse and you are gone."
He does approve of FISA and retroactive immunity, this he answers?
US Constitution: Amendment VIII
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Waterboarding is a cruel, if not unusual, punishment, regardless if they call it "torture" or not.
Those involved in waterboarding are breaking the Constitution and should be tried and treated as such...
Waterboarding is torture to the one who is being waterboarded. It is fun and games to the person doing the waterboarding.
It will be interesting to see if he keeps repeating the same BS once bush is indicted for war crimes.
I think the little flag is a symbol to identify themselves
to each other. It says, "Hey, I'm also an a%#hole."
Would anyone expect something different from a Bush
appointee? If he wasn't a yes man he wouldn't be in
his position.
"Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?" Senator Ted Kennedy asked Mukasey. "I would feel it was," Mukasey said, while insisting that that does not constitute a legal opinion.
A charming example of Orwellian New Speak! As long as someone else is being waterboarded then this cowardly, scumbag, sell-out to humanity and decent principles isn't sure.
If it's him being tortured then yes it is, but this is not a legal opinion, said the top law enforcement officer in the land.
'The meaning of is is...'
The sleazy scumbag Republicans brought the government to its knees over a pathetic little lie about sex, but they go along with an Attorney General who is beyond pathetic in his twisting of logic and truth to suit the needs of an administration of psychopaths and murderers.
As for what US enemies may face if captured, well, Mukasey and the rest of his frightened, inadequate, incompetent, brain-dead little crew have made it clear that so-called enemies will face torture, thus opening the door to the torture of U.S. soldiers and others at the hands of whoever it is Bush and friends are out to destroy. And let's remember that we have no assurances that the Bush crowd is not itself torturing U.S. citizens. The police used to do it in this country routinely. Now the politicians have arrogated to themselves the right to do it to Americans.
Anyone who thinks he is safe in America under a Republican regime has his head so far up his ass he could never be waterboarded.
I'm sure the Chief Justice, a disgrace to the once progressive Hoosiers, wouldn't give a damn either...
Mukasey is a dual Isreaeli-Citizen and should never be in any US office. Throw the chickenhawk bums out this election cycle.
I agree with the the fact that this human sell-out refuses to acknowledge reality. However, this player is the system's "legal" figure -- and if this player says waterboarding "is" torture -- he opens the floodgates to you know who being potentially tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
By the way, my reference to "you know who" covers a collective of these creeps who have been squatters in our White House! They should be kicked out and tried!
A vacillating coward chosen by murdering ninnies. He will never sell out his owners.
Before anyone attempts to answer any question re waterboarding, he/she should first be waterboarded.
This is a bit off-topic, but in the picture, Mukasey is another one (like Cheney & Bush) wearing the U.S. flag pin. What is it with the pin thing? I don't have a TV or read the newspaper, so don't know how rampant it is. The idea of it gives me the heebie-geebies. It's like one more 'fatherland' / 'homeland' signal being rammed down our collective throat.
And that would be torture - just like waterboarding.
"I don't think it would be appropriate for me to pass definitive judgement on the technique's legality," the head of the united states justice department who was appointed by george w. bush said.
(corrected for glaring clarity)
if you don't know your job, dipshit, perhaps it's time to take up golf.
and to our dear senators...
while you piddle away and sit on your thumbs, THEY'RE DESTROYING THE EVIDENCE YOU SEEK.
(not to mention that spying on americans without a warrant is, and was at the time, A FELONY.)
Waterboarding is torture. The real question should be, 'are there conditions under which torture should be allowed?' The answer is always yes when you are asking the torturer. The answer is aways no when you ask the person being tortured.
The true indication of a government is what they do when no one is watching (or when no one can do anything about it.) Our government has condoned and conducted torture.
Add this to the list of things the US government condones: land mines; cluster bombs; innocent deaths; global warming; genetically modified food; support of dictatorships that allow US corporations to act with impunity; lack of universal health care; rigged elections; lack of democratic participation (keeping Kucinich and Mike Gravel out of the debates); death penalty; and a whole host of other policies that benefit corporate America at the expense of the American people.
so it goes...
"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Silence comforts the tormenter, never the tormented."-- Elie Wiesel