It has been well over 24 hours, and I am still waiting for the collective freak-out from the frothing right about Mukasey’s traitorous proclamations yesterday.
Where are all the patriots? As we learned with Dick Durbin, we must condemn Mukasey’s comments or mullahs everywhere will be laughing at us.
*** Update ***
And I am no legal scholar, but I just don’t understand how someone trying to get the job as Attorney General can get away with saying things like this in his confirmation hearing:
After some legal argumentation, Mukasey replied, essentially, that going outside a statute is an extreme step, and implied that he’ll take steps to ensure that “push doesn’t come to shove” between presidential authority and statutory limitation. But he left the door open for at least some nebulous presidential power that trumps congressional attempts at limitation.
Why do we even have statutes anymore if they are just for guidance?
crayz
This is sad though. Just more of the same
myrtle parker
John, come off of it.
The wingnuts are not going to freak out over Mukasey precisely because they recognize him as one of them.
You know how Wingnuts love when their candidates speak in code? Throwing in subtle allusions to bible verses or obscure Supreme Court cases? Well, guess what Mukasey did today –> He absolutely refused to call torture… torture. He would not condemn water boarding as torture. This is code to the right and signals to them that Mukasey is just like Bush, “We don’t torture. Period.” in defining torture downwards.
So what if Mukasey throws his predecessor under the bus and condemns past product of the DOJ. Since he refuses to call a spade a spade and recognize that water boarding is torture he is signaling to everyone that the status quo will remain and the United States of America will continue to TORTURE brown people all the while denying it because Pres. Bush has redefined it.
myrtle parker
How about this?
If water boarding isn’t torture… is it at least assault and battery? You know, a felony??!!
Zifnab
John, have you ever watched a horror movie and wondered why a zombie will never attempt to eat another zombie? It’s like that.
Billy K
I’m still waiting for Kaus’ refutal of goat-blowing behavior. I don’t know how many days it’s been, but I know it’s been too many.
When will you break the silence and explain yourself to the ‘merkin peoples, Mickey?!
jcricket
Good analogy. Are these the slow-moving zombies of traditional fare? Or the ones from 28 days later?
jcricket
Because 9/11 changed everything. Right?
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Really? Wow, I’d think of a more productive way to use my time, because no freak-out is forthcoming. If you would read the remarks, you’d know why.
Mukasey said in his response, “We don’t torture” (three words which have been curiously cut out of the transcription by such intellectually honest men *cough* *hack* *wheeeeze* as Sullivan and Benen, who flat-out invents his own reality with the brain-damaged headline, “Mukasey… compares U.S. torture to Nazi tactics,” which I guess is why he had to leave out “We don’t torture”) because it is opposed to American values. This is exactly the same thing Bush said months ago.
Durbin essentially said that our troops DO torture, and that they are like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge and the Soviets in using the techniques they used.
One guy said we DON’T torture, one guy said we DO torture. Why should we expect the two statements to elicit the same response?
Again, I can’t believe I have to explain this to adults, but…just because two guys use the words “Nazis” and “torture” in a sentence doesn’t mean they said the same thing.
canuckistani
Relax. All the mullahs died in the Surge.
Bruce Moomaw
Er, EEEL: he also denounced the Bybee Memo at the same time, agreeing explicitly with Leahy that it attempted to legitimize torture.
But he did refuse to say whether he regards the same view of the later similar Bradbury memo exposed by the NY Times, on the grounds that he hasn’t read it yet — which, of course, is the standard Sgt. Schultz “I know NOTHINK!” cop-out used nowadays by all Presidential nominees, which is why all so-called “Congressional confirmation hearings” have become preposterous party-line farce. He also flatly refused to tell Sen. Whitehouse whether he regards waterboarding as torture — by which I mean that he didn’t even say that he hadn’t made up his own mind on the subject: he just flatly and repeatedly refused to tell Whitehouse what his views are on the subject!
Tsulagi
Me neither. Mukasey is right, we don’t torture. You can easily see that in previous Congressional testimony…
Graham, who saw those materials not disclosed to the public, had his back in that we don’t torture…
Do you see the word “torture” anywhere in there, moonbats? No. So proof positive we don’t. Now the president has man-upped acknowledging there was some abuse at the hands of a few bad apples. So at the most if you wanted to stretch it, you might claim there was enhanced abuse, but not torture.
Bruce Moomaw
Correction to my last statement: Mukasey DID say at the beginning of his exchange with Whitehouse that he didn’t know whether waterboarding was torture because “I don’t know what’s involved in the technique.” One would think that by now he would have made some attempt to find out.
Bruce Moomaw
EEEL’s reply to Tsulagi will, of course, be that those low-level Bad Apples did all those nasty things entirely contrary to military regulations. Anyone tempted to actually fall for this line is advised to go through Andrew Sullivan’s lengthy and really impressive file of evidence that the Bad Apples got explicit permission from some very high-level Bad Trees.
Darkrose
What? The Constitution is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules, right?
Zifnab
Arg, yah be fixed or yah be walk’n da plank.
rawshark
SquEEELer Says:
You guys are of course looking at things all wrong….blah blah blah.
The Populist
jcricket,
Try the slow moving ones since conservatives are slow to pick up on reason and judging from Denny Hastert’s wasteline, not very healthy either.
Bruce Moomaw
To sum up what Mukasey actually said (and what Sullivan and Benen, correctly, reported him as saying): he doesn’t yet know whether we actually have been torturing prisoners, but that the chief of the White House’s Office of legal Counsel definitely said it’s permissible; if we have been, it’s both illegal and immoral; and the President definitely does not have the right to authorize it unilaterally without Congressional approval.
As for Durbin: well, to quote (as Sullivan did) the wash. Post report of what he said:
“In a Senate floor speech Tuesday, [Senator Dick] Durbin cited an FBI report describing Guantanamo Bay prisoners chained to the floor in the fetal position without food or water and sometimes in extreme temperatures.
” ‘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,’ he said, ‘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.’ ”
I think most people will agree that, if this ain’t torture, it’s definitely close enough for government work.
Bruce Moomaw
And, to quote Spencer Ackerman’s original report on Mukasey (which Sullivan and Benen linked to): “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. That answer is sure to create anxiety inside the CIA, where many interrogators fear that they will be brought up on charges for carrying out interrogation methods earlier approved by the administration.”
It’s wise to assume that Ackerman knows what he’s talking about in that last sentence; he has, after all, been described by George Will as a “non-fanatic” who has frequently raised serious questions about Bush Administration behavior.
So, EEEL: your move.
Cinderella Ferret
Even the Khmer Rouge knew that torture could not be used to obtain reliable, actionable intelligence. Torture was used as a means to terrorize suspected dissidents, and to create a more servile population.
It is my OPINION the current administration understands the point I just made. The “extreme interrogation” methods are being used to terrorize Muslims. Why? To create fear amongst those who might be inclined to do us and our allies harm. We can see how well its working. Again–this is my opinion. But what other reason could these people have for continuing this madness? Isn’t brute force the modus operandi for this administration? Why should we be surprised Bush and the gang would think any differently about torture than they do about blowing up Iran because they–might–someday–in the future–have a nuke? Isn’t a “raghead” just a “raghead”? (Unless, of course, you want to hold hands with the “good ones” because your family has done business with them for almost a century.)
Do you believe they would nominate an AG who did not have the same POV?
chopper
you can always count on EEEL to try to ‘context up’ the issue of torture in defense of his boys. “torture is evil and we don’t torture, as long as you ignore the following:”
Jess
Well said!
As for EEEL, at least his points sound plausible enough to make us work to counter them–we’ve been sadly lacking in even marginally intelligent opposition lately. So, EEEL, let me say that I’m glad you’re posting here, even though you are of course totally wrong about everything.
Bruce Moomaw
Regsarding Mukasey and the Bradbury Memo, “Through the Looking Glass” makes another observation that really should be obvious:
“”The general administration line, you’ll recall, is that their ‘interrogation techniques’ — sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, extreme cold, shackling prisoners into ‘stress positions’ that take their shoulders halfway out of their sockets, simulated drowning, or whatever else happens to amuse them at the moment — aren’t actually torture according to American law, and contravene no ban. (The long-standing national and international jurisprudence to the contrary is apparently somehow mistaken). But, when it came to two recently uncovered memos which stated this position, perhaps, a bit more clearly than they had heretofore in public, Mukasey demurred:
” ‘Mr. Mukasey declined to discuss recent news reports that the Justice Department, after rescinding the original opinion on harsh interrogation techniques, produced two secret legal opinions in 2005 that authorized similar techniques in terrorism cases. He said he could not comment on the later memorandums because he had not read them; he said he intended to review them early in his tenure at the Justice Department.’
“Now, if the Democratic Congressional leadership wanted to make at least a token gesture of actual concern for the issue, to demonstrate that they were willing to do more about it than just blow hot air, then they would be perfectly within their rights to ask him to review the damn things now, and come back when he’s prepared to answer questions about them.”
___________________
To which I will only add that, while he’s doing so, Judge Mukasey might want to brush up on what waterboarding is, since he also announced today that he couldn’t say whether or not it was torture because “I don’t know what’s involved in the technique.” One would think that by now he would have made some attempt to find out.
Not that I’m holding my breath until the Senate Dems agree to make him do this, of course. According to tonight’s Wash. Post, Leahy and Feingold now say they’re suddenly developing cold feet; but I think it safe to say that just enough Democrats will fold to allow him to be narrowly confirmed anyway, after which Administration business will proceed as before. Remind me again why we elected these guys last November?
liberal
John Cole wrote,
Agreed.
Also, my impression—I could be wrong, maybe it’s more complicated than this—is that re Padilla, Mukasey at some point thought it’s OK that a citizen be denied habeas corpus.
Any judge who thinks that isn’t fit for dogcatcher and should be promptly impeached and removed from office.
laneman
Bush has addressed zombies here
Chris Johnson
Torture is used to terrorize dissidents and create a more servile population HERE.
Who seriously believes this is only meant for foreigners?
The idea is that the terror will always rise to stay on top of American discontent. We are meant to never have an uprising or remove these guys from power because they decline to be removed- and when the time comes, it will appear distinctly possible to meet that fate yourself if you are an American dissident acting to remove Bush and his people from power.
Torture creates a more servile population HERE.
We can already see it working.
Chris Johnson
And that said, if that’s the goal, who actually gives a fuck if some raghead blows up some of the US peasants? Less to feed.
Rick Taylor
I think EEEL makes a good point here. Criticizing a memo is different than criticizing something that actually happened. Indeed, I think people’s dissatisfaction with Mukasey’s refusal to state what the government has actually done is torture, or to even state that water boarding is torture, is directly linked to why conservatives would feel no need to distance themselves from him. The very reason liberals are dissatisfied with him is the same reason conservatives aren’t.
I say this as one who finds it depressing that techniques such as sleep deprivation, humiliation, temperature extremes, water boarding, extended isolation and such are even under debate.
Actually, I think we’re lucky the administration appointed someone who was willing to stand up to them in Padilla. Given this administration, he’s probably the best we could expect.
jcricket
I don’t think so, not with this administration/group of nimwits.
I think with them, As Orwell said in 1984, the point of torture, is torture. The point of power, is power.
Look to the entire expansion of Yoo-esque legal doctrine (the unitary executive). They don’t plan on ever giving up this kind of power. It’s been Cheney’s quest for 30+ years.
I really think the phrase “our long national nightmare is over” is more appropriate than ever once Democrats win back the WH and take an even bigger Senate and House majority in 2008.
myrtle parker
They torture simply because they can.