[Peace-discuss] Senate Democrats cave in on torture

[C. G. Estabrook]

[An observation on this topic produced some contention at tonight's 
meeting. --CGE]

	Democrats cave in on torture
	Key senators back attorney general nominee
	By Bill Van Auken 11/04/07

Two key Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced 
Friday afternoon that they will support the Bush administration’s 
nominee for attorney general, former federal judge Michael Mukasey, 
virtually assuring his confirmation as head of the US Justice Department.

Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who originally proposed Mukasey for 
the post, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said that they 
would vote in favor of the nominee. With the judiciary panel split 10-9 
between the Democrats and Republicans—with all nine Republicans already 
committed to backing Mukasey—this assures that the nomination will go to 
the full Senate. As many as 20 Democrats are expected to back the 
nomination, giving a comfortable 70 votes for confirmation.

Schumer declared that Mukasey was not his “ideal choice,” but praised 
his “integrity and independence.” Feinstein declared, “He is not Alberto 
Gonzales,” who left the Justice Department in the face of the mounting 
scandal over the politically motivated firing of US attorneys.

Another Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Russ Feingold of 
Wisconsin, also indicated he may vote for Mukasey. Calling him a “marked 
improvement” over Gonzales, Feingold told the New York Times, “He may be 
the best nominee we can get from this administration.”

The rallying of crucial Democratic support for Mukasey has taken place 
in the context of a deepening controversy over the nominee’s refusal to 
declare illegal the US government’s blatant use of torture against those 
it has illegally detained around the globe.

Leading to an explicit defense of torture on the part of the 
administration and its supporters, the entire debate has served to 
expose the terminal decay of basic democratic processes and principles 
within the United States under the combined impact of colonial war 
abroad and the staggering growth of social inequality at home.

At the center of debate is the steadfast refusal of Mukasey to respond 
directly or truthfully to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee 
on whether waterboarding -- the brutal and agonizing practice utilized 
by the CIA, in which victims are strapped to boards and water is poured 
over a cloth covering the mouth while they slowly suffocate -- 
constitutes illegal torture.

Bush spoke in support of Mukasey again Friday while in South Carolina 
for a campaign fundraiser for Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading 
Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I strongly urge the United States Senate to confirm this man, so that I 
can have an attorney general to work with to protect the United States 
of America from further attack,” said Bush.

The wording was significant in that it posed the paramount function of 
the US attorney general as that of the president’s enforcer in the 
so-called war on terrorism. Upholding the Constitution, protecting the 
democratic rights of the people or enforcing the laws of the land as 
well as international law are all regarded as superfluous in comparison 
to this all-encompassing crusade in which all methods are valid, 
including wars of aggression, illegal detention, waterboarding and other 
forms of torture.

Meanwhile, one of the leading Republican presidential candidates, Fred 
Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, weighed in on the debate over 
Mukasey, indicating that as president he would support waterboarding in 
the name of national security. “I’ve always thought that when you get 
right down to it, the measures have to meet the situation,” he said, 
after being asked if he would oppose the torture method.

Bush also received support for the Mukasey nomination from two of the 
most prominent newspapers in the country Friday.

In its lead editorial, the Washington Post lamented that “Mr. Mukasey is 
being judged not on his merits but as a proxy for Bush.” The editorial 
continued, “Yet critics of the nomination, while understandably 
disturbed by Mr. Mukasey’s unwillingness to label waterboarding illegal, 
may be working against the last, best hope to see the rule of law 
reemerge in this administration.”

The distinction made by the Post between the criminality of the Bush 
administration and Mukasey’s stonewalling during his Senate testimony is 
nonsensical. The nominee’s “unwillingness to label waterboarding 
illegal” has only one motive. He knows full well that this practice is a 
violation of both national law and international treaties barring 
torture and he is well aware that Bush, Cheney, the CIA and the entire 
administration are criminally responsible for its use by American 
interrogators.

By dodging the question, Mukasey is protecting this criminality and 
making it clear that, like his predecessors, he will serve as a defender 
of the illegal acts of the White House. So much for the Post’s claim 
that he represents the “last, best hope” for restoring the rule of law.

In feigning an even-handed approach, the Post goes on to suggest that, 
instead of barring Mukasey’s nomination, the Senate should “do something 
which, for all the rhetoric, they have so far declined to do: ban 
torture.” Specifically, it called for the body to support a measure 
introduced by Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, requiring all 
US personnel, including the CIA, to limit themselves to interrogation 
methods approved in the US Army Field Manual. The document bans 
waterboarding, which has been recognized by the American military as a 
form of torture for more than a century.

 From a legal standpoint, this is nonsense. The US Senate has passed 
bans on torture over and over again by ratifying the Geneva Conventions 
and Conventions against Torture, all of which make waterboarding an 
international war crime. There is more than enough legal authority to 
bring war crimes charges against Bush administration officials.

 From a political standpoint, the Post points to the two-faced character 
of the Democratic opposition to torture. The Democrats will make noises 
in the Senate when they think it serves their political advantage. But 
they have refused to enact an explicit ban on waterboarding by the CIA, 
for fear of charges that they are “soft on terrorism.”

The Democrats also fear a constitutional confrontation with the White 
House. Both the administration and its nominee Mukasey have made it 
clear that they do not believe that the president is bound by such laws 
to the extent that they infringe upon his limitless power as commander 
in chief under conditions of an unending war against terrorism.

Also weighing in on the Mukasey nomination Friday was the Wall Street 
Journal in an editorial entitled “Mukasey and the Democrats.” The 
Journal, whose editorial positions generally reflect the outlook of the 
extreme right-wing clique that determines the policies of the Bush 
administration, not surprisingly defended not only the nominee but 
torture itself.

The editorial finds it incredible that Mukasey’s nomination has been 
placed in doubt when his only “supposed offense is that he has refused 
to declare ‘illegal’ a single interrogation technique that the CIA has 
used on rare occasions against mass murderers.” In plainer words, what’s 
all the fuss about a little torture against people who had it coming any 
way?

The Journal defended Mukasey’s refusal to state an opinion on 
waterboarding based on “hypothetical facts and circumstances,” on the 
grounds that he had not yet been briefed on “the classified 
interrogation details.” This was the same argument made by Bush the day 
before.

The “classified interrogation details” cannot add much to the public 
record. Waterboarding has been around since the Spanish Inquisition. 
Known at various times as the “water cure” or “Chinese water torture,” 
it has always been recognized as a means of torture. In 1902, an 
American officer was court-martialed for inflicting it upon insurgents 
in the Philippines. After World War II, Japanese military personnel were 
prosecuted for war crimes for using it against POWs.

Even the present-day US State Department denounces the practice as 
torture when it is used by other countries. When American personnel 
carry it out, however, it is defended as an “enhanced interrogation 
technique” -- the same euphemism employed by the Nazis -- that is 
indispensable in the war on terror.

Mukasey’s evasion of the question means only that he will continue the 
practice of his predecessors of defending torture and protecting the 
chief torturers in the White House. And that is fine with the Journal.

“What’s really at stake here is whether US officials are going to have 
the basic tools required to extract information from America’s enemies,” 
the paper declares. It continues: “As for waterboarding, it is mostly a 
political sideshow. The CIA’s view seems to be that some version of 
waterboarding is effective in breaking especially tough cases quickly.”

The Gestapo, it might be added, was of the same opinion. While the scale 
of the latter’s use of these methods was no doubt greater than that of 
the American intelligence agencies, the underlying contempt for 
international law, democratic rights and human dignity are much the same.

In concluding its editorial, the Journal makes the partisan -- though 
legitimate -- point that the Democrats’ outrage over Mukasey’s position 
on waterboarding is largely cynical.

It quotes a Democratic senator at a 2004 hearing: “I think there are 
probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that 
torture should never ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives 
are at stake.... It is easy to sit back in the armchair and say that 
torture can never be used, but when you are in the foxhole it is a very 
different deal. And I respect, I think we all respect the fact that the 
President is in the foxhole every day.”

The editorial identifies the senator as “New York Democrat Chuck 
Schumer, who recommended Judge Mukasey for Attorney General in the first 
place.”

Before announcing late Friday his decision to vote in favor of Mukasey, 
Schumer had maintained a studied silence on the nomination since the 
Senate confirmation hearings. On Friday, however, the New York Times 
quoted him as saying: “No nominee from this administration will agree 
with us on things like torture and wiretapping. The best we can expect 
is somebody who will depoliticize the Justice Department and put rule of 
law first, even when pressured by the administration. If Mukasey is that 
type of person, I’ll support him.”

How an attorney general can “put the law first” while defending torture 
and illegal wiretapping, the senior senator from New York did not bother 
to explain.

Going by their record the Democrats are virtually certain to let 
Mukasey’s nomination pass, while allowing all those for whom it is 
politically expedient -- including the party’s presidential nominees -- 
to vote against it. Such was the path taken in 2004 when the Democrats 
refused to filibuster the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney 
general, even though it was known that he played a leading role in 
drafting the memos providing a pseudo-legal justification for torture.

The debate, in the end, has only served to expose once again the full 
complicity of the Democratic Party in the wholesale attacks on 
democratic rights carried out over the past six years, including the 
legitimization of torture.

It bears noting that, in focusing the debate on waterboarding, the 
Democrats have deliberately obscured other fundamental questions posed 
in Mukasey’s testimony. The nominee voiced his agreement with the 
position that the president as commander-in-chief has the inherent 
constitutional power to override the law in the name of national security.

It is this reactionary conception that underlies not only Mukasey’s 
backhanded defense of torture, but also his upholding of the legality of 
the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program. Of course, 
on the latter issue, the Democratic-led Congress has already largely 
bowed to the demands of the White House for warrantless surveillance.

When pressed in the nomination hearing about his view that the 
president’s executive powers allowed him to override the law, the 
nominee answered: “We are not dealing here with black and white. Which 
is why it’s very important that push not come to shove, because the 
result could be not just divisive but disaster.”

None of the senators bothered to ask what kind of disaster Mukasey had 
in mind. The most obvious answer would be the imposition of an outright 
dictatorship.

Such are the ugly truths about the profound moral and political rot of 
the American ruling establishment that have been laid bare by the 
Mukasey nomination process.

Engaged in dirty wars of aggression and pursuing a predatory policy of 
colonial conquest in the Middle East and Central Asia, the American 
ruling elite has embraced torture as an instrument of policy. This has 
found its hideous expression in Abu Ghraib and in the secret prisons of 
the CIA around the globe.

Military aggression abroad is ultimately incompatible with democracy at 
home. That the criminal practice of torture is now openly defended in 
public debate in the US itself is a warning that America’s ruling 
financial oligarchy is prepared to jettison the last vestiges of 
democratic rights and employ these same methods at home in order to keep 
hold of its power and wealth.

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