[Peace-discuss] Senate Democrats cave in on torture

[C. G. Estabrook]

It's nevertheless true, as the headline says, "Democrats cave in on 
torture."  It's in the nature of a party to act corporately.  --CGE

Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> The contention was that */not all/* liberal Democrats, or even most on 
> the committee, were to vote for Mukasay, which is what was reported at 
> the meeting. One should be careful and responsible. There is the flavor 
> of a vendetta for some reason in attacking */all/* Democrats (with nary 
> a mention of Repubs, save Ron Paul). 
> 
> --mkb
> 
> On Nov 4, 2007, at 10:46 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> [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.
>>
>> Copyright 1998-2007 World Socialist Web Site
>> _______________________________________________
>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss