DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: sirs on October 22, 2007, 12:07:13 AM
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Mukasey's Constitution
The attorney general designate refuses to be Congress's yes-man.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
While nothing emerged from the confirmation hearings last week to prevent Judge Michael Mukasey from becoming Attorney General, the questioning did show that he will be his own man and won't let himself be intimidated into adopting any Senator's personal interpretation of the Constitution.
On Wednesday, Judge Mukasey explicitly repudiated the controversial 2002 Bybee memo, which argued for an expansive view of Presidential authority regarding the Geneva Convention and torture. "The Bybee memo, to paraphrase a French diplomat," said Judge Mukasey, "was worse than a sin, it was a mistake. It was unnecessary." And on his independence of mind as Attorney General in matters of bedrock law or ethics, Judge Mukasey said that if he disagreed with President Bush, "I would try to talk him out of it, or leave." Democrats loved that.
Their ardor dimmed a day later, however, when Judge Mukasey's Democratic interlocutors tried to get him to declare himself on the legality of specific interrogation techniques, in particular on "waterboarding" (simulated drowning). Mark us down as thinking it a sign of Judge Mukasey's character to have finally told the Senators that he would not put the careers or "freedom" of the interrogators of captured terrorists at risk "simply because I want to be congenial" with the Senators' views on waterboarding.
On the issue of executive authority for warrantless eavesdropping, Judge Mukasey was also robust, and refreshing. The President, he said, "does not stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution." And that Constitutional authority, he said, includes the President's power to defend the country.
This was not what Senator Pat Leahy and his colleagues wanted to hear, and they groused publicly, as is their habit. But aren't these the same Members who had said going in to the hearings that they didn't want a yes-man as Attorney General? We would hope that includes not taking dictation on Constitutional interpretation from individual Members of Congress.
Article (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010762)
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Torturing Mukasey
The judge becomes a pawn in the politics of interrogation.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Just when you thought someone might be confirmed in Washington without a partisan fight, Senate Democrats are suggesting they may not approve Michael Mukasey as Attorney General after all. The judge's offense is that he's declined to declare "illegal" an interrogation technique in the war on terror that Congress itself has never specifically banned.
Last week, Democrats postponed a vote on his nomination. And all 10 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have sent Judge Mukasey a letter expressing alarm that he refused to repudiate "waterboarding" during his recent confirmation hearing. "I don't know what's involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional," the judge had said. This seems fair enough, because both the Justice Department's legal opinions on interrogation and the specific CIA practices are classified. It would be irresponsible for Judge Mukasey to make any declarations about the law or practice until he knows the details.
That's not good enough for Democrats, who are under pressure from their antiwar left to keep pinning a phony "torture" rap on the Bush Administration. The letter from the Judiciary Democrats demands that Judge Mukasey declare himself on the legality of "waterboarding," with the clear implication that if he gives the wrong answer his nomination won't make it out of committee. These are the same Democrats who had declared, before he was nominated, that Judge Mukasey was exactly the sort of "consensus" choice they welcomed.
The irony here is that Congress has twice had the chance to ban waterboarding, or simulated drowning, but has twice declined to do so. In both the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Congress only barred "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. While some Members have said they believe waterboarding is banned by that language, when given the chance to say so specifically in a statute and be accountable for it, they refused.
As usual, Congress wants it both ways. The Members want to denounce what they call "torture," but the last thing they want is to be responsible if some future detainee knows about an imminent terrorist attack but the CIA can't get the information because Congress barred certain kinds of interrogation. So they toss their non-specific language into the lap of the executive, and say "You figure it out."
Yet they still object because the Justice Department has since tried to interpret that language by providing some practical, specific guidelines to the CIA. According to several news reports, the CIA rarely uses waterboarding but believes it can be useful against the very hardest cases.
Senator John McCain all but acknowledged Congress's political dodge when he once said that, while he deplored aggressive interrogation, in extremis a President might have to approve it. And in that case, he added, the Commander in Chief has the power to absolve some Jack Bauer-type who did the dirty work. At least Mr. McCain is honest about the realities of the war on terror, in which surveillance and interrogation are two essential tools to prevent future attacks. But this also passes the buck from Congress to the executive, and CIA interrogators can be forgiven if they want more specific guidance lest they be interrogated themselves by the Monday-morning generals on the Judiciary Committee.
We hope Mr. Mukasey holds fast to his earlier answer. If he makes a declaration of illegality, he will be doing so without all the facts and will undermine the Office of Legal Counsel officials he may soon supervise at Justice. If he attempts the feint of saying that he is personally opposed to waterboarding or other aggressive techniques, he may get confirmed. But Congress will eventually ask if he's gone on to ban these techniques, which in any case is a Presidential decision. The judge will only be buying political trouble for himself later.
If Democrats want a 2008 debate over specific interrogation procedures, then by all means let's have it.
And if they want to ban waterboarding, or for that matter any stressful interrogation, they can try to do so. But they shouldn't use a universally hailed Attorney General nominee as a political pawn to appease the antiwar left even as they refuse to say what kind of interrogation they do support.
Article (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010797)
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Detainees HAVE been tortured, both by the USA and the goonish governments that detainees were remanded to.
It is not IN ANY WAY a phony charge.l
Waterboarding is torture. This clown should either agree to that or look for another job.
And that is not all. This clown is NOT "universally hailed". I don't hail him and I am fer from being the only one.
You, I am sure, not only hail him but heil him as well.
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You, I am sure, not only hail him but heil him as well.
What is it with Democrats and calling people who disagree with them Nazis?
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You, I am sure, not only hail him but heil him as well.
What is it with Democrats and calling people who disagree with them Nazis?
It does appear to be analogus to a reflex. The farther left in your idiocy, the faster it comes out
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The farther right you are, the more obvious it becomes.
Ve should all respekt Herr Mukasey bekause he is "universally hailed".
Ve muss all agree. Ve muss all march togezzer! Ein Zwei Drei Fuhr!
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Ve muss all agree. Ve muss all march togezzer! Ein Zwei Drei Fuhr!
And, interestingly enough, it's the Democrats who vote in one block and refuse admittance to their party unless everyone toes the party line.
Go figure.
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The problem is that there are two major parties, and on a global political spectrum, one is right wing, the other is center-right to centrist.
The Democrats haven't been leftist in years. Most Americans who call themselves leftists are members of the "New Left" which is something of a cause-du-jour group of secular individualists, with very little in the way of any real philosophical foundation.
So when you have two very similar parties that are the only game in town, what do you have to really argue about? Issues? Not really because the disagreements aren't that substantial. No, it comes down to character assassinations and nothing could be nastier than that.
There are no real Fascists in here, because that would mean taking an actual political and philosophical stand. It is mostly a group of individualists (with exceptions of course) who take laborious pains to justify what their "team" is standing for today.
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The problem is that there are two major parties, and on a global political spectrum, one is right wing, the other is center-right to centrist.
Actually, I've always said that the two major parties both want to take your rights away, they just disagree over the order they want to remove them...
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How hard would it be for Mukasey to say: "Yes. Waterboarding IS torture, and we won't be doing any more of it in the few remaining quackings of the Lame Duck that are the death throes of the Juniorbush Administration.
How hard would that be for this clown to say?
And why, of why won't he say it.
UNLESS he is all for waterboarding.
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Nominee?s Stand May Avoid Tangle of Torture Cases
[.............]
Scott L. Silliman, an expert on national security law at Duke University School of Law, said any statement by Mr. Mukasey that waterboarding was illegal torture ?would open up Pandora?s box,? even in the United States. Such a statement from an attorney general would override existing Justice Department legal opinions and create intense pressure from human rights groups to open a criminal investigation of interrogation practices, Mr. Silliman said.
?You would ask not just who carried it out, but who specifically approved it,? said Mr. Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke. ?Theoretically, it could go all the way up to the president of the United States; that?s why he?ll never say it?s torture,? Mr. Silliman said of Mr. Mukasey.
[..........]
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/washington/01mukasey.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
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Thursday, November 01, 2007
Judge Mukasey and the Groucho Marx Principle
JB
This New York Times article suggests that Judge Mukasey cannot announce that waterboarding is illegal at his confirmation hearings for Attorney General because of concern that this would lead to criminal prosecutions and civil suits against CIA operatives who performed interrogations.
Do not believe it.
The Congress twice bestowed immunity in the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act. And if CIA operatives acted in good faith on OLC opinions, which are binding law in the executive branch, they are immune from prosecution. Even if these immunities do not extend to civil lawsuits, such lawsuits are likely barred by a combination of immunities created for government (and military) personnel. The Administration has been quite careful to ensure that its members-- and those obeying its orders-- will never be held to account in any American court of law.
To be sure, if Bush Administration officials travel abroad, they may be indicted and tried for war crimes. But if so, that is already true, and Judge Mukasey's statement would not trigger liability: it would merely be additional evidence-- if any were needed-- that waterboarding is a war crime.
The real reason why Judge Mukasey cannot say that waterboarding is illegal is that Administration officials have repeatedly insisted that they do not torture, and that they have acted both legally and honorably. If Judge Mukasey said that waterboarding is illegal, it would require the Bush Administration to admit that it repeatedly lied to the American people and brought shame and dishonor on the United States of America. If Judge Mukasey were to say waterboarding is illegal and not just "a dunk in the water" in Vice President Cheney's terminology, he would have announced that, as incoming Attorney General, he is entering an Administration of liars and torturers.
Several Republican Senators, who are living in a fool's paradise, have pleaded with Judge Mukasey to declare waterboarding illegal after he becomes Attorney General and has time to study the matter thoroughly. But the Administration would be no happier with such an announcement after confirmation than before. One can be quite certain that enormous pressure will be brought to bear on Mukasey after he enters the Administration never to make that particular pronouncement.
Which places any Attorney General nominee in a difficult bind: The Bush Admininstration will not nominate anyone to be Attorney General who will state publicly that what the Administration did was illegal or dishonorable. That means that the only persons who can be nominated are those who are willing to be complicit in its illegality and dishonor. For if the nominee admitted that the Administration had repeatedly misled the American people about the legality of its actions, he would not be welcome in the Bush Administration.
It is a bit like Groucho Marx's famous line: To be Attorney General in the Bush Administration requires apology for lawbreaking and torture. No Attorney General with any self respect should want to join an Administration like this that would have him as a member.
Posted 6:25 AM by JB [link]
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/11/judge-mukasey-and-groucho-marx.html
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The real reason why Judge Mukasey cannot say that waterboarding is illegal is that Administration officials have repeatedly insisted that they do not torture, and that they have acted both legally and honorably. If Judge Mukasey said that waterboarding is illegal, it would require the Bush Administration to admit that it repeatedly lied to the American people and brought shame and dishonor on the United States of America. If Judge Mukasey were to say waterboarding is illegal and not just "a dunk in the water" in Vice President Cheney's terminology, he would have announced that, as incoming Attorney General, he is entering an Administration of liars and torturers.
Guess he won't be saying it is illegal, then.
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/11/01/mukasey/print.html
The sad decline of Michael Mukasey
His reputation for integrity was meant to restore credibility to the Justice Department. Instead, his remarks on waterboarding show that he, like Alberto Gonzales, has let the White House call the shots.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Nov. 01, 2007 | When President Bush nominated Michael Mukasey as attorney general his distinguished career was offered as guarantee of his integrity and independence. A former federal district judge, senior partner at a major law firm and former assistant U.S. attorney, well known and widely respected by the New York bar, he appeared to have the experience and balance needed to restore trust to the battered Justice Department. The previous attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, had been an eager plaything of the White House, a factotum from Texas who faithfully followed orders to politicize and purge for partisan purposes. While Mukasey espouses conservative views upholding an expansive interpretation of the executive, and argues that warrantless domestic surveillance is therefore justified, Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee were still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Then Mukasey was questioned about whether waterboarding -- a technique of forced drowning first used in the Spanish Inquisition and by orders of the Bush administration applied to accused terrorist detainees -- is torture. At great length, the nominee feigned lack of knowledge: "I think it would be irresponsible of me to discuss particular techniques with which I am not familiar when there are people who are using coercive techniques and who are being authorized to use coercive techniques. And for me to say something that is going to put their careers or freedom at risk simply because I want to be congenial, I don't think it would be responsible of me to do that." Questioned further, he said, "If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional." But he would not say whether it was torture.
All 10 Democratic senators on the committee sent Mukasey a letter asking him to clarify whether waterboarding is torture. On Oct. 30, the nominee replied in four convoluted pages. He called waterboarding "over the line" and "repugnant" on "a personal basis," but adopted the lawyerly pose that it was merely an academic issue: "Hypotheticals are different from real life and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical."
Mukasey's retreat into abstraction, however, did not shield him from controversy. On the contrary, Democratic senators on the committee now declared that his nomination was in jeopardy. With his deliberately opaque replies, Mukasey had failed to protect himself, but instead in a stroke exposed himself to rejection. He did not suddenly find himself in trouble because he was an outsider to Washington. Nor had he committed a gaffe or a slip of the tongue, or displayed strange behavior. The nominee who was to be the break from Gonzales was acting remarkably like Gonzales.
Mukasey is not a free agent. He had been strictly briefed and in his testimony was following orders. He has avoided calling waterboarding torture because that is consistent with the administration's position and past practice. Mukasey's refusal to disavow waterboarding reveals his acceptance of his assignment to a secondary role as attorney general, an inferior agent, not a constitutional officer, to certain political appointees in the White House.
Those who are responsible for waterboarding have defined and dictated Mukasey's evasions. His acquiescence demonstrates that no one in his position could take a contrary view to that of David Addington, Vice President Cheney's former counsel and now chief of staff, who directed and coauthored the infamous memos by former deputy assistant director of the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo justifying torture, and charged the current acting director of OLC, Stephen Bradbury, to issue new memos rationalizing it.
Addington is the reigning legal authority within the administration, presiding over the attorney general no matter who would fill the job. Addington rules by decree and tantrum, intolerant of any alternative opinion, which he suppresses with intimidation and threat. Gonzales, as White House counsel and then attorney general, was the marionette of Karl Rove and Addington. Rove is gone, but Addington remains.
In his confirmation hearings, Mukasey has proved he will dance as the strings are pulled. His positions on waterboarding express precisely the relationship between the Bush White House and its Justice Department. Mukasey's testimony telegraphs that the White House will continue to call the shots. He has already ceded the essence of his power even before assuming it. His vaunted integrity and independence have been crushed, short work for Addington.
Addington's dominion over the law -- controlling the writing of the president's executive orders and the memos from OLC, the office of the White House counsel and the carefully placed network of general counsels throughout the federal government's departments and agencies -- is a well-established and central aspect of Cheney's power. Addington has been indispensable to the vice president since he served as his counsel on the joint congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal, when Cheney was the ranking minority member. In that capacity, Addington wrote, under Cheney's signature, the notorious minority report that was an early clarion call for the imperial presidency.
Addington and Cheney's report decried Congress for its "hysteria" over the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved the selling of missiles to Iran to finance arms for the Nicaraguan Contras against explicit congressional legislation. The Constitution, they argued, "leaves little, if any doubt that the president was expected to have the primary role of conducting the foreign policy of the United States." They added: "Congressional actions to limit the president in this area therefore should be reviewed with a considerable degree of skepticism. If they interfere with the core presidential foreign policy functions, they should be struck down."
The Cheney minority report was the doctrinal basis for the Bush presidency: the unitary executive, the commander in chief ruling in wartime by fiat and, ultimately, torture being defined as whatever the president, not the Geneva Conventions, said it was. Addington's authorship of the Cheney Iran-Contra report was largely overlooked until fairly recently, but his deeper connection to that scandal and its resonance have received little attention.
In the 1980s, Addington, then in his 20s, served as deputy counsel to CIA director William Casey, the moving force behind the Iran-Contra affair and the most powerful figure in the Reagan administration after the president. Along with other hotshots in the counsel's office, Addington was part of what became known within the agency as the "Lawless Group," named after Richard Lawless, a CIA operative who was a close assistant to Casey, according to a former senior CIA official. After Casey's death, Rep. Dick Cheney co-opted the "Lawless Group," putting its members in key positions when he was secretary of defense during the first Bush administration and vice president in the second. (Lawless, for example, after working as Jeb Bush's business partner, served as deputy undersecretary of defense, retiring this past April.)
"A lot of the decisions on Iran-Contra were signed off by the counsel's office," a longtime senior CIA official told me. "It was not a renegade operation. It had lawyers, just like now. Everything they were doing was run by the general counsel's office and Addington was deputy. You may draw your own conclusions, as the Russians say." In fact, the role of the counsel's office surfaced in the trial of Alan Fiers, the CIA agent in charge of the Central American Task Force, who pleaded guilty to misleading Congress. But that role was never investigated or ever really reported.
"These guys don't like the mainstream CIA. In fact, they hate it," the CIA official explained. "They don't like information unless it fits what they want to hear. They hate the CIA because the CIA tells them what they don't want to hear. They want assessments that prove ideological points. They are looking for simplistic answers to complicated issues. They inhabit a make-believe world of moving up into perceived areas of expertise. It's the same guys; they all resurface when Republicans are back in power. It's the same group. It's a system. The similarities are amazing in all these wars we've been dragged into."
Casey is the half-forgotten forefather of the radical Bush presidency. A clandestine agent of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, the intelligence group predating the CIA, Casey became a wealthy and politically influential lawyer. He was among the original godfathers of the conservative movement, serving on the board of the right-wing Regnery publishing house, operating as financier of William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review and founding conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute.
An avid supporter of Richard Nixon's, Casey was appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and president of the Import-Export Bank. Casey regarded the Watergate scandal as a mere political attack, "political shenanigans," as he described it to Nixon in a private letter in May 1973. In 1980, Casey was director of Reagan's campaign. After the election he wanted to be named secretary of state, but settled for CIA director.
"By God, we've got to get rid of the lawyers!" he told William Webster, Reagan's FBI director. Tim Weiner, in his newly published history of the CIA, "Legacy of Ashes," writes, "Like Nixon, he believed that if it's secret, it's legal." "Casey was an inappropriate choice," said former CIA director George H.W. Bush.
Casey conducted his own foreign policy, relying on secret methods and men of action. His rival, Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz, remarked, "The CIA's intelligence was in many cases simply Bill Casey's ideology." "Casey had made of himself a clandestine secretary of State," wrote his biographer Joseph Persico in "The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey: From the OSS to the CIA." "His involvements in Afghanistan, China, the Philippines, Iran, and Central America had not been simply those of a spy chief but those of a covert foreign minister."
Casey chose Lt. Col. Oliver North to run the covert Contra operation and suggested to him plans for illegal supply in violation of the Boland Amendment and how to use a middleman for selling arms to Iran. The final report of the joint congressional committee on the Iran-Contra scandal concluded: "We believe that the late Director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, encouraged North, gave him direction and promoted the concept of an extra-legal covert organization." "The person who managed this whole affair was Casey," said Abraham Sofaer, then the State Department's counsel.
Before congressional committees, Casey falsely testified that the CIA was unaware of the shipment of missiles to Iran. His perjury was exactly the same as that of then National Security Advisor John Poindexter, on the same question, and it is likely he would have been indicted, faced trial and been convicted, like Poindexter. Casey's then deputy, Robert Gates, now secretary of defense, said, "Casey was guilty of contempt of Congress from the day he was sworn in." Adm. Bobby Inman, who preceded Gates as deputy, had resigned because, he said, "I caught him lying to me in a number of cases." Inman's immediate successor as deputy, John McMahon, quit after opposing the Iranian arms deal. After a week of mumbling appearances before Congress, Casey collapsed from a cancerous brain tumor and died.
Casey's closest aides -- including the Lawless Group -- scattered. Cheney promptly hired Addington. As his counsel, Addington attacked the investigation, defended the administration and covered up his own involvement in the Casey operation. One former prominent Democratic Senate staff member who had directed the probe told me that the Democrats were unaware of Addington's link to Casey. If they had been they would have raised it as a dangerous conflict of interest and demanded that he be removed. "Addington never should have been permitted to work on the committee," he said. "But no one paid attention to his background. It wasn't important."
Cheney's defense of Casey's actions as written by Addington in the minority report became the core of the Bush doctrine: The president as commander in chief can do whatever he wants regardless of Congress. There must be no checks and balances, no accountability. There must be no disclosure to other branches of government, whether legislative or judicial. Oral findings, or, if necessary, secret memos, make the illegal legal merely by saying they are legal in the name of presidential authority. The operational need to know determines who knows.
Now Mukasey, who was supposed to restore credibility to the Justice Department, has been transformed overnight into a cog in the machine, another servant to his masters, Addington's apologist. His brief tragedy is just one small outcome of a long history. The almost instantaneous tainting of his reputation should have been understood from the start as inevitable.
-- By Sidney Blumenthal
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Thanks for the opinion, Sid. Given your history of said op-eds, I think its safe to conclude you have an obvious bias against this administration, and anyone in it. As such, your opinion here is hardly surprising, nor what one might consider "objective"
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TR On "Inhuman Conduct" Against Military Prisoners
02 Nov 2007 10:30 am
"The president desires to know in the fullest and most circumstantial manner all the facts, ... for the very reason that the president intends to back up the Army in the heartiest fashion in every lawful and legitimate method of doing its work; he also intends to see that the most vigorous care is exercised to detect and prevent any cruelty or brutality and that men who are guilty thereof are punished. Great as the provocation has been in dealing with foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder and torture against our men, nothing can justify or will be held to justify the use of torture or inhuman conduct of any kind on the part of the American Army,? - Teddy Roosevelt, upholding the American tradition that Bush and Cheney have unforgivably and indelibly trashed.
He was specifically referring to "waterboarding." There is no doubt whatsoever about the illegality of the practice.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
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He was specifically referring to "waterboarding." There is no doubt whatsoever about the illegality of the practice.
Usually when there are disputes between the exutive and other branches the Supreme Court decides who is correct.
Have they?
Because if they haven't , there is doubt.
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He was specifically referring to "waterboarding."
Source? I don't see waterboarding mentioned anywhere in that quote.
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The one most important question of the entire questioning of Mukasey has been to ask him whether he considers waterboarding torture. He refuses to say this. He will only say that IF waterboarding is a torture, then he opposes it. But he refuses to say whether he thinks that Chinese Water Torture, which is what waterboarding has been called since the Tong Dynasty is a form of torture.
I suspect that this is because if he admits that Chinese Water Torture (or American Water Torture) is indeed torture, then he, as attorney general, will be expected to prosecute those who have approved it for use on Iraqis, 'terrorist combatents', detainees, remandees and all manner of people who it has been used on, and perhaps the adinistration will be forced to arrest Cheney, Rummy, perhaps even Juniorbush himself and accuse him of torturing people.
Everyone knows that these clowns have used torture, everyone knows that there are many soldiers who saww it and refused to participate in it. There are many witnesses. But Mukasey wants this job so utterly much and is sooooo grateful to Junorbush for nominating him, that he dares not say that water torture is torture.
I hardly think that the towering intellects of Scalia and Thomas are really needed to decide that water torture is torture, but even they would probably have to rule in favor of the view that it is torture.
Juniorbush wants the entire torture evidence to be hidden forever behind a veil of secrecy. This could be for the simple reason that he would prefer to not do hard time in Leavenworth, even though he had Cheney and Rummy for prospective cellmates and members of the Leavenworth Chess Club.
I think that locking these criminal dorks up would be a really good way to convince the rest of the world that the next administration was not as evil as the present crew of felons.
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But he refuses to say whether he thinks that Chinese Water Torture, which is what waterboarding has been called since the Tong Dynasty is a form of torture.
The "Chinese Water Torture" is a different technique than waterboarding, and neither seem to have been developed by the Chinese. Chinese Water Torture seems to have been developed by the Italians and waterboarding seems to have been developed by the Spanish, both in the late middle ages.
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Okay, so what is "Chinese Water Torture", and how is it different?
Waterboarding, as has been described in the press and on TV for the past four years, is clearly torture.
I did not claim that the Chinese invented it, that is just what it was called. It involves making people beileve that they wil be drowned if they do not comply with the interrogator.
It is superior to plugging one's genitals into an electrical grid because that leaves burn marks and scars. This does not mean that it is any less terrifying or painful.
It offers the possibility of denying that anything ever took place. That is why the Juniorbushies prefer to torture people with it than other less deniable forms of torture.
I am all for them turning Mukasey down and forcing Juniorbush to try harder and again. Gonzales was so utterly awful that someone extra-turthful is needed to counter the damage done by Gonzo over such a long time.
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Okay, so what is "Chinese Water Torture", and how is it different?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_water_torture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_water_torture)
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The waterboarding technique was characterized in 2005 by former CIA director Porter J. Goss as a "professional interrogation technique."[14] According to press accounts, a cloth or plastic wrap is placed over or in the person's mouth, and water is poured on to the person's head. As far as the details of this technique, press accounts differ - one article describes "dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect's face"[15], another states that "cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him."[16]
Two televised segments, one from Fox News and one from Current TV, demonstrate a waterboarding technique that may be the subject of these press descriptions.[17][18] In the videos, each correspondent is held against a board by the interrogators. In the Current TV segment, a rag is then forced into the correspondent's mouth, and several pitchers of water are poured onto the rag. The interrogators periodically remove the rag, and the correspondent is seen to gasp for breath.
The Fox News segment mentions five "phases" of which the first three are shown. In the first phase, water is simply poured onto the correspondent's face. The second phase is similar to the Current TV episode. In phase three, plastic wrap is placed over the correspondent's face, and a hole is poked into it over his mouth. Water is poured into his mouth through the hole, causing him to gag. He mentions that it really does cause him to gag; that it could lead to asphyxiation; and that he could stand it for only a few seconds.
CIA officers who subject themselves to the technique last an average of 14 seconds before caving in.[19]
Poorly executed waterboarding can cause extreme pain and damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, and sometimes broken bones because of the restraints applied to the struggling victim. The psychological effects can last long after waterboarding ends. Prolonged waterboarding can also cause death.[20]
Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. An interview for The New Yorker states, "[He] argued that it was indeed torture, 'Some victims were still traumatized years later', he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. 'The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience,' he said."[21]
Proponents argue that the technique effectively produces information while only being used as a last resort to obtain critical information. They also argue that there is almost no risk of long-term bodily harm.[22] Opponents argue that this information may not be reliable because a person under such duress may admit to anything. The UN Convention Against Torture, which the United States ratified in 1994,[23] says in Article 2, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture." Former CIA officer Bob Baer states that waterboarding is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough."[24]
Historical uses
Spanish Inquisition
From the article about the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834, with its most active period from 1480-1530), a form of torture similar to waterboarding called toca , along with garrucha (or strappado) and the most frequently used potro (or the rack), was used (though infrequently) during the trial portion of the Spanish Inquisition process. Quoting from the article: The toca, also called tortura del agua, consisted of introducing a cloth into the mouth of the victim, and forcing them to ingest water spilled from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning.[25]
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The original "Chinese Water Torture" involves strapping a person down and allowing water to drip, drip, drip on their forehead over an extended period of time, with the water being dripped at irregular intervals. This is said to cause insanity, eventually.
So it seems that the Porter Goss-approved waterboarding is WORSE than 'Chinese Water Torture'. And there seems to be very little doubt as to HOW it is done and WHAT it is.
So Mukasey looks like one of two things: (a) a hideous suckup or (2) a total moron. Anyone with even the brain of a demented Meerkat that is interviewing for the AG job should have done his homework as to what waterboarding is.
Did anyone notice how Goss, who was appointed rather triumphantly to the DCIA seems to have slunk away from the post with hardly any mention in the press at all?
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If we must choose between Mukasey being the yes-man of Congress or another yes-man of Juniorbush, which is preferable?
I suggest that the former is far better than the latter, based on the fact that pretty much everything Juniorbush has touched has turned to sh*t.
He does the wrong things, incompetently. When reminded that he has done the wrong thing, he persists. When he is told that he has screwed up badly, it takes him a very long time to do it differently.
His stubborness and his bad judgement has become the stuff of legend.
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Did anyone notice how Goss, who was appointed rather triumphantly to the DCIA seems to have slunk away from the post with hardly any mention in the press at all?
Didn't notice "hardly any mention" at all, since the press conference where it was announced was pretty well covered on TV and in the newspapers. You'd have to live under a rock to not know it happened.
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I did not see or hear anything about Goss resigning or being canned.
They certainly made a far bigger deal of how great and well-suited he was to be DCIA when he came than they did about how bad he was or how much better his successor was when he quit.
Perhaps I was under a rock or something, but I missed it totally.
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Perhaps I was under a rock or something, but I missed it totally.
Well, since I work in the finance industry, we always seem to have TVs around on various finance channels all day. They broke into the ongoing programs to make the announcement. I'm pretty sure they broke into the soap operas. And it was an AP item reported over the weekend (the resignation was on a Friday) so it was in every major newspaper.
Here's one example: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8HDP7AG2&show_article=1 (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8HDP7AG2&show_article=1)
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I don't watch soap operas, and I do normally watch the Friday evening news.
I get the Miami Herald every day.
They certainly made a bigger deal about Goss when he got the job than when he resigned.
That story you quote is pitifully short. About as wimpy a story as anyone could write about the DCIA.
Was there no speculation as to why he left? Was he forced out? Did he resign out of frustration? I guess we shall never know, unless he writes a book. And the book may be full of lies.
They know more about Bin Laden than they want to say publicly. I am sure that this terrifies the Hell out of him. He is shaking in his goat-roping sandals.
They do not, however, know enough about him to be able to arrest or kill him. A seven-foot tall Arab with a kidney problem would seem to be quiet easier to catch than Bigfoot or a Yeti. I know that I am unimpressed.
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Waterboarding is torture - I did it myself, says US advisor
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 01 November 2007
When the US military trains soldiers to resist interrogation, it uses a torture technique from the Middle Ages, known as "waterboarding". Its use on terror suspects in secret US prisons around the world has come to symbolise the Bush administration's no-nonsense enthusiasm for the harshest questioning techniques.
Although waterboarding has been considered torture for over a century and the US military is banned from using it, controversy over its continuing use by the CIA may be about to derail the appointment of President Bush's candidate for US Attorney-General.
Michael Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York and a veteran of several al-Qa'ida trials, was questioned by a Senate committee on Tuesday and refused to say whether waterboarding was illegal.
Instead, he called the technique "repugnant to me" and promised to investigate further if he was confirmed in the job. He explained that he could not say yet whether the practice was illegal because he had not been briefed on the secret methods of US interrogators and he did not want to put the CIA officers who used it in "personal legal jeopardy".
Even though Congress banned waterboarding in the US military in 2005, it did not do so for the CIA. As a result, Mr Mukasey told senators, it was uncertain whether this technique or other harsh methods constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. His answers did not satisfy the Democrats, however, and his approval now hinges on whether he is willing to say the torture method is against US law.
In a further embarrassment for Mr Bush yesterday, Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice. He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises. Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique ? period".
The practice involves strapping the person being interrogated on to a board as pints of water are forced into his lungs through a cloth covering his face while the victim's mouth is forced open. Its effect, according to Mr Nance, is a process of slow-motion suffocation.
Typically, a victim goes into hysterics on the board as water fills his lungs. "How much the victim is to drown," Mr Nance wrote in an article for the Small Wars Journal, "depends on the desired result and the obstinacy of the subject.
"A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."
The CIA director Michael Hayden has tried to defuse the controversy. He claims that, since 2002, aggressive interrogation methods in which a prisoner believes he is about to die have been used on only about 30 of the 100 al-Qai'da suspects being held by the US. Meanwhile, a CIA official told The New York Times waterboarding had only been used three times. The Bush administration has suggested that the interrogation of al-Qai'da's second-in-command, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was a success thanks to the technique, and used this to justify continued aggressive interrogations of suspects in secret CIA prisons.
While US media reports typically state that waterboarding involves "simulated drowning", Mr Nance explained that "since the lungs are actually filling with water", there is nothing simulated about it. "Waterboarding," he said, "is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. When done right, it is controlled death."
Mr Nance said US troops were trained to withstand waterboarding, watched by a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a backup team. "When performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner ? it is torture, without doubt," he added. "Most people cannot stand to watch a high-intensity, kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American."
Mr Mukasey's nomination goes before the Senate next week. Three Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, have already said they will not support him. However, the White House said yesterday that it did not believe his nomination was in jeopardy.
'I felt I was drowning and I was in terrible agony'
Henri Alleg, a journalist, was tortured in 1957 by French forces in Algeria. He described the ordeal of water torture in his book The Question. Soldiers strapped him over a plank, wrapped his head in cloth and positioned it beneath a running tap. He recalled: "The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn't hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save me from suffocation. In spite of myself, the fingers of both my hands shook uncontrollably. 'That's it! He's going to talk,' said a voice.
The water stopped running and they took away the rag. I was able to breathe. In the gloom, I saw the lieutenants and the captain, who, with a cigarette between his lips, was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed."
From: Alleg, Henri, The Question, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln: 2006; original French edition ? 1958 by Editions de Minuit
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3115549.ece
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Exclusive: Only Three Have Been Waterboarded by CIA
November 02, 2007 1:25 PM
Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:
Exclusiveonly_mn For all the debate over waterboarding, it has been used on only three al Qaeda figures, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.
As ABC News first reported in September, waterboarding has not been used since 2003 and has been specifically prohibited since Gen. Michael Hayden took over as CIA director.
Officials told ABC News on Sept. 14 that the controversial interrogation technique, in which a suspect has water poured over his mouth and nose to stimulate a drowning reflex as shown in the above demonstration, had been banned by the CIA director at the recommendation of his deputy, Steve Kappes.
Hayden sought and received approval from the White House to remove waterboarding from the list of approved interrogation techniques first authorized by a presidential finding in 2002.
The officials say the decision was made sometime last year but has never been publicly disclosed by the CIA.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/exclusive-only-.html
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This is most likely some sort of leak to help that turkey Mukasey get appointed.
How is it that Mukasey says it is "repugnant to him", but he somehow lacks the information to call it "torture"?
How can this be a valid way for a judge to express himself: to remain ignorant, deliberately?
Could a one-year-and change important enough to this guy to merit him annouincing to the world that he is basically a whore?
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He is better off not saying , no matter what he intends to do about it.
Imagine President Hillary Clinton sends a nominee to the Senate to be interviewed and he is asked a hot potatoe question like this one , one that any definative answer to would either insult the boss ,or offend a very great number of people , or tie his hands in the future when circumstances might change.
You want Hillarys nominees to make definative answers no matter what the question is?
(President Hillary Clinton..... brrrr..)
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I would prefer that candidates for all positions declare exactly where they stand on all important issues, whether for Hillary or anyone else.
Hillary could not possibly be worse than Juniorbush and Cheney. They have ripped out of the envelope of incompetence and the envelope of stubborness and broken thru to the land of utter stupidity.
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I would prefer that candidates for all positions declare exactly where they stand on all important issues, whether for Hillary or anyone else.
Hillary could not possibly be worse than Juniorbush and Cheney. They have ripped out of the envelope of incompetence and the envelope of stubborness and broken thru to the land of utter stupidity.
I agree with your principal , I despair of such a princialed person getting past our Senate .
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I agree with your principal , I despair of such a princialed person getting past our Senate .
If I were a superintendent of schools, like Superintendent Chalmers, I would no doubt have a principal, like Principal Skinner, for you to agree with.
But this is a matter of principle, not principal.
I once had a teacher who said "Remember: the princiPAL is your PAL." I remember that particular principal giving me detention, so a pal he was not, but I did remember this as the way to tell the difference between these two homonyms.
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Mukasey is not principled. He knows that waterboarding is torture and refuses to admit itl, because he is sucking up to Juniorbush, whom he will refuse to prosecute for malfeasance, despide the fact that he has seriously malfeased.
He's already retired, he can collect a juicy judicial pension, and he should be thrown back, like an undersized flounder.
A double honest Attorney General is what we need, to make up for the halfassed toady, Gonzales.