Posted by Damozel | Even though I've been pretty under the weather today, and disinclined to blog, this is too important not to address.
Michael Mukasey---a nominee with strong bipartisan backing---has taken a strong and unequivocal stand on torture. Senator Patrick Leahy (remarking with bitter irony, that the 2002 "torture memo" signed by Office of Legal Counsel Chief Jay Bybee, is "one of the greatest things in the history of this country"), questioned him specifically on his view of the Bybee memo. Mukasey said that it was "worse than a sin, it's a mistake."(TPM)
He compared the use of torture to the "barbarism" of the Nazis that the U.S. opposed during World War II. "We didn't do that so that we could then duplicate it ourselves." (TPM) He also said: "We don't torture, not because it's against this or that law or this or that treaty.... It is not what this country is about; it is not what this country stands for; it is antithetical to what this country stands for." (video)
He said that the Bybee memo is "worse than a sin, it's a mistake. It was unnecessary....It purported to justify measures based on broad grants of authority that were unnecessary."(TPM). He said he repudiates the memorandum. "Most significantly, Mukasey said that he is unaware of any inherent commander-in-chief authority to override legal restrictions on torture -- a huge repudiation of Dick Cheney, David Addington and John Yoo's perspective on broad constitutional powers possessed by the president in wartime -- or to immunize practitioners of torture from prosecution."(TPM) He said that as AG he would review all legal memoranda on interrogation techniques. (TPM)
Here are some first reactions rounded up by Memeorandum:
Justin Gardner at Donklephant:
Well, things are looking up.
The new AG-to-be is talking quite specifically about his opinions on torture and they do not line up at all with the Administration’s.....
I guess there is indeed a new sheriff in town. (Mukasey Slams Torture)
At Think Progress, they're not quite as happy as I am. Mukasey wasn't prepared to say he'd close Guantanamo. "I’m prepared to recommend to the President that we take the responsible course in dealing with the people at Guantanamo. I can’t simply say we have to close Guantanamo because obviously the question there arises of what we do with the people who are there." Mukasey: ‘I Can’t Simply Say We Have To Close Guantanamo’
So now I'm wondering....how far have my standards fallen that I feel like doing a happy dance complete with victorious arm pumpings because the nominee for attorney general isn't in favor of torture? That used to be the sort of thing I kind of took for granted.
MEJ at Middle Earth Journal also pours ice-cold water on my parade. "We have a long history of Bush appointees saying what they think congress wants them to say and then doing the opposite," he cynically remarks. "Think Alberto Gonzales, John Roberts and Antonin Scalia. Have we been had again? Time will tell...The question remains - will he walk the walk?" Will He Walk the Walk?
The Carpetbagger Report asks a question that I admit crossed my mind as I watched: how did he get away with implying that the use of torture makes us like the Nazis? Didn't the Republican rhetoric go batshit crazy when Senator Dick Durbin implied that using Nazi tactics makes us sort of like the Nazis (has it really been two years)?
Specifically, Durbin, on the Senate floor, said, “If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”
In June 2005, shortly after Durbin’s remarks, Karl Rove delivered a speech to the New York Conservative Party in which he said Durbin’s historical comparison was literally dangerous to the safety of Americans.
“Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”
It was, even by Rove standards, breathtaking demagoguery. On the one hand, he said Durbin was encouraging terrorists. On the other, Rove said liberals in general, and Durbin specifically, intend to undermine the safety of U.S. troops.....
Durbin, shortly thereafter, made a tearful apology, but from time to time, you’ll still see conservatives reference his historical analogy (”The Senate Majority Leader says the war is ‘lost’; the Senate Minority Leader compares Americans to Nazis….”) Mukasey rejects Bybee memo, compares U.S. torture to Nazi tactics
And, in one of my favorite quotes of the year: "It’s a reminder that the right, for all of its many faults, can manufacture an outrage out of nothing, and then pretend it never happened. It’s almost impressive, in an offensive kind of way." Mukasey rejects Bybee memo, compares U.S. torture to Nazi tactics .
At The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan wonders whether right-wing bloggers will jump on Mukasey with both feet the way they did with Durbin.
"Duplicate what we opposed"? Nazi concentration camps? Does that remind you of anyone?. Is it not clear that Mukasey's and Durbin's point is exactly the same? And do you recall, as I do, the phenomenal blog-storm and Fox News conniption and outrage from every other pro-torture platform on the web? Here's a classic Reynolds-Steyn post ridiculing and scorning those who were concerned about what was going on at Gitmo. Let's see if Reynolds or Steyn will lambaste the incoming attorney-general on the same grounds, shall we? Or will their double standards reveal their partisan hackery again? Mukasey, Durbin and the Right
Let's not be hasty....I'd settle for an admission from any or all that they were wrong, but that Mukasey has made them see the error of their ways, so long as it concludes with a humble apology to Durbin, to the American people, to the victims of "harsh interrogation techniques," and to everyone whose opposition to torture got them called treasonous, un-American, etc. etc..
Also, if you don't understand what "harsh interrogation techniques" means, see the picture Sullivan posted to illustrate. Mukasey, Durbin and the Right
OTHER REACTIONS AT MEMEORANDUM
RELATED BN-POLITICS POSTINGS:
Romney's Pick for National Security Adviser Would Torture 'in a Heartbeat.'
"Aggressive Interrogation Techniques" Part 2 (ATTN: Republican Candidates).
"Aggressive Interrogation Techniques" versus The American Way.
More Secret & Illegal Maneuvering re: the Administration's Use of Torture
Tales of Repression in Burma; First Lady Laura Bush Takes a Stand
General Says Rumsfeld Misled Congress re: Abu Ghraib
Colin Powell Calls for Closing of Guantanamo
Senate Takes Swipe at Secret CIA Prisons, Seeks to Learn What Bush Knew Before Invading Iraq
LINKED
Mukasey Calls Torture 'Antithetical' to American Way (TPM)
Comments