Posted by Cockney Robin | Two dozen military and intelligence officials, diplomats, and law enforcement officials have written to the Senate asking that the Senate Judiciary Committee hold the nomination of Michael Mukasey to attorney general until such time as he has gained sufficient information on waterboarding to determine his position. In a letter addressed to Senators Specter and Leahy, they wrote:
Values that are extremely important to us as former intelligence officers are at stake in your committee’s confirmation deliberations on Judge Michael Mukasey. With hundreds of years of service in sensitive national security activities behind us, we are deeply concerned that your committee may move his nomination to the full Senate without insisting that Mukasey declare himself on whether he believes the practice of waterboarding is legal.
We feel this more acutely than most others, for in our careers we have frequently had to navigate the delicate balance between morality and expediency, all the while doing our best to abide by the values the vast majority of Americans hold in common. We therefore believe we have a particular moral obligation to speak out. We can say it no better than four retired judge advocates general (two admirals and two generals) who wrote you over the weekend, saying: “Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.” (quoted in No Quarter)
Hello? Is anyone listening? In the previous few weeks, a number of people who know what they are talking about---including one former instructor at SERE----have weighed in on the issue of waterboarding and every one of them has made exactly the same point: waterboarding---i.e., "simulated death by drowning"---is torture and illegal. How can any sane person go on saying that there isn't enough information to reach a reasoned conclusion on this score? (And why---given that it is illegal among civilised nations elsewhere in the world---was the question ever in doubt?)
The letter is signed by an array of persons whose credentials to speak on this subject and cumulative experience should surely, in and of themselves, reduce any rational opposition---emphasis on 'rational'--- to silence.
The letter's signatories include Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson, which is one reason (obviously there are others) I know not to expect rationality from the opposition.
But anyone without a vested interest in being right knows the solution to Mukasey's spurious 'dilemma.' Given that President Bush considers it 'unfair' for Mukasey to be queried on topics as to which he is sufficiently informed. As a citizen of America's chief ally, I am begging someone---anyone---to give him the information he needs to reach an informed opinion so that Mukasey himself, the Senate, the Bush Administration, the American people, the British people, and the whole bloody rest of the world will know where America's attorney general stands on this point.
Which is exactly the question that the military and intelligence officials who sent the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee propose to resolve.
There is nothing hypothetical or secret about the fact that waterboarding was used by U.S. intelligence officers as an interrogation technique before the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004. But after Alberto Gonzales became attorney general in February 2005, Justice reportedly issued a secret memo authorizing harsh physical and psychological tactics, including waterboarding, which were approved for use in combination. A presidential executive order of July 20, 2007 authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” that had been banned for use by the U.S. Army. Although the White House announced that the order provides “clear rules” to govern treatment of detainees, the rules are classified, so defense attorneys, judges, juries — and even nominee Mukasey — can be prevented from viewing them.
Those are some of the “facts and circumstances.” They are not hypothetical; and there are simple ways for Judge Mukasey to become informed....The conundrum created to justify the nominee’s silence on this key issue is a synthetic one. It is within your power to resolve it readily. If Mukasey continues to drag his feet, you need only to facilitate a classified briefing for him on waterboarding and the C.I.A. interrogation program. He will then be able to render an informed legal opinion.....We believe it very important that the Senate not acquiesce in his silence—and certainly not if, as seems the case, he is more concerned about protecting senior officials than he is in enforcing the law and the Constitution.(quoted in No Quarter)
If it were I who had written this letter, I'd follow it up with a suggestion that the 'waterboarding: torture?' sceptics arrange to witness a demo through SERE and then---if they still aren't certain---volunteer to undergo the process. I am not an unkind man, but sometimes direct experience is the best teacher.
The letter's signatories (listed below) also address Mr Bush's threat to refuse to select any attorney general if he can't have this one. "So be it." (quoted in No Quarter)
Exactly.
With all the opposition from informed sources, you'd think that people who think a little waterboarding is justifiable if you're convinced the recipient might be a terrorist would finally stop defending the indefensible. You'd think they'd stop trying to justify a technique which everyone who knows anything about it says isn't an effective way to get reliable information. You'd think that the presumably very fearful and indeed rather cowardly people who attempt to justify it would finally concede that the end is not worth the means. You'd think that even the ones who are still on the fence would listen to people who actually know what they're talking about.
So do you want to know what the 'rational' opposition' has to say about this letter? Do you?
Here's your 'rational opposition' from The Jawa Report. Here's why you can discount the expert opinion of the letter's signatories know what they are talking about and discount any possibility that their opposition to Mukasey and Bush Administration policies might be based on a conviction that they are wrong:
[T]he list includes too many people who have been "distinguished" by partisan activity and relentless self-promotion for their letter to be taken as anything other than a political stunt. "Notorious" might better describe some, including signatory Mary McCarthy, who was dismissed from the CIA, allegedly for leaking classified information to the Press.
And, of course, when one of the most prominent signatories is a DailyKos diarist, as Larry Johnson is, there can be little doubt that the motivation for making so much noise over a technique that has been used three times is a partisan statement. (Left Coordinates 11th Hour Push Against Mukasey)
Here's why Michelle Malkin thinks you don't.
But it isn't just the right wingers. Here's why Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat who has taken a firm stand on 'principle' had to say about the issue in general:
[T]he Department of Justice — once the crown jewel among our government institutions — is a shambles and is in desperate need of a strong leader, committed to depoliticizing the agency’s operations.
The department has been devastated under the Bush administration. Outstanding United States attorneys have been dismissed without cause; career civil-rights lawyers have been driven out in droves; people appear to have been prosecuted for political reasons; young lawyers have been rejected because they were not conservative ideologues; and politics has been allowed to infect decision-making.
We are now on the brink of a reversal. There is virtually universal agreement, even from those who oppose Judge Mukasey, that he would do a good job in turning the department around. My colleagues who oppose his confirmation have gone out of their way to praise his character and qualifications. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, for one, commended Judge Mukasey as “a brilliant lawyer, a distinguished jurist and by all accounts a good man..... (A Vote for Justice)
Hey, even people who won't vote to confirm him say he's brilliant: A brilliant and distinguished jurist, and---'by all accounts'; love the hedging, Senator!---a good man, who isn't going to take anyone's word for it that torture is torture. Well that's all right then. But wait! There's more:
I am confident that Judge Mukasey would enforce that law. On Friday, he personally made clear to me that if the law were in place, the president would have no legal authority to ignore it — not even under some theory of inherent authority granted by Article II of the Constitution, as Vice President Cheney might argue.”(A Vote for Justice)
Except here is what law blogger Marty Lederman has to say about that:
That all sounds perfectly fine and reasonable . . . except, of course, that no such specifying law will ever be "in place," because the President, devoted to torture and cruelty, would veto it...Senator Schumer might be mollified by Judge Mukasey's assurances that the President could not disregard statutes limiting interrogation techniques. But the Judge has been strategically quite selective on the basic question. He will not say whether the President can disregard statutes governing electronic surveillance. And he claims not to "yet" have a view on whether Congress has the constitutional power to enact legislation setting a deadline for withdrawal of troops from an armed conflict..(A Vote for Justice)
And I don't know anything about American law, but it sounds from the above as if there is little chance that Mukasey would ever have to worry about enforcing any hypothetical law to prevent the US government from waterboarding.
Catch the shouting at Memeorandum here.
Also: here.
RELATED BN-POLITICS POSTS
Bush Administration Blocked Critic Who Experienced Waterboarding
Giuliani: Is Waterboarding Torture? "It Depends on Who Does It."
Romney's Pick for National Security Adviser Would Torture 'in a Heartbeat.'
I say 'Torture'; You Say 'Harsh Interrogation Techniques'.... (Updated)
LINKED
They should be held accountable for torture...
Posted by: Jenny Liverpool | March 11, 2009 at 11:28 PM