In a capitulation to the Bush administration, two leading Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee—Diane Feinstein (CA) and Charles Schumer (NY)—have announced their intention to endorse attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey.
Mukasey, a former federal judge, shocked even his Senate supporters by refusing to rule out the use of torture during
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Although it is unsurprising, the act seals the Democrats’ complicity in the basest and most repressive aspects of the Bush administration’s criminal wars. It also cleared the path for Mukasey’s approval by the entire Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-8 on Nov. 6 to send Mukasey’s nomination to the Senate floor.
In a written statement to the committee, Mukasey was asked whether “simulated drowning, dogs, forced nudity, stress positions, beatings, and induced hypothermia” are “unlawful.” Mukasey answered, “As described in your letter,” the techniques “seem over the line or, on a personal basis, repugnant to me.” However, “hypotheticals are different from real life, and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical,” he said. “I was and remain loath to discuss and opine on any of those alternatives at this stage.”
Mukasey argued that any statement of his would aid “our enemies” and might “present our professional interrogators in the field … or those charged with reviewing their conduct, with either a threat or a promise that could influence their performance in a way inconsistent with the proper limits of any interrogation program they are charged with carrying out.”
At the epicenter of the dispute is the practice of “waterboarding.” Waterboarding is an interrogation tactic in which suspects are strapped to boards and water is poured over cloths covering their mouths to induce the sensation of suffocation and drowning.
Waterboarding has been defined as a form of torture since the Spanish Inquisition. In 1902, an American officer was court-martialed for using it against prisoners in the Philippines. And in the aftermath of World War II, Japanese military personnel were prosecuted for war crimes for subjecting POWs to the tactic. Even the U.S. State Department denounces the practice as torture when it is used by other countries.
Senator Schumer asserted that his decision to support Mukasey had been “extremely difficult.” He defended his decision by claiming that Mukasey had conveyed to him that “were Congress to pass a law banning certain interrogation techniques, we would clearly be acting within our constitutional authority.”
The passage of such a law would have no effect whatsoever. The United States is already the signatory to numerous laws and treaties which ban torture, most notably the Geneva Conventions. Such agreements constitute American law; therefore, torture is already unambiguously illegal.
Mukasey’s nomination was further bolstered by two key endorsements from the establishment’s leading organs, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. The Post argued in its lead editorial that “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 Wall Street Journal went even further, arguing that Mukasey’s “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.”
Two capitalist parties of war, torture
Bush himself reaffirmed his defense of Mukasey and torture: “The American people must know that whatever techniques we use are within the law. … I’m not going to talk about techniques. There’s an enemy out there. … Some people have lost sight of the fact that we are at war with extremists and radicals who want to attack us again.”
While the Mukasey hearings took place, the leading Republican presidential candidates moved to position themselves further to the right of the Bush administration. Rudolph Guliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson have in recent weeks endorsed not only waterboarding, but also sleep deprivation.
Sustained sleep-deprivation is described in the United States Army Field Manual on Interrogation as a form of mental torture, and the practice has been ruled inhumane even by the Supreme Court of Israel, a country known for its human rights violations.
Meanwhile, candidate Guliani joked about its use. “They talk about sleep deprivation,” he said. “I mean, on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly.” He continued: “Now, intensive questioning works. If I didn’t use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of Mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than it is. Intensive questioning has to be used. Torture should not be used. The line between the two is a difficult one.”
All three candidates defend the Guantánamo prison camp. Mitt Romney even pledged to “double Guantánamo” and has also said that in the event of an “extreme terrorist threat,” he would be willing to “stick a knife in somebody’s thigh in a heartbeat.”
Meanwhile, Former Senator Thompson has argued that there are circumstances where “you have to do what is necessary to get the information that you need.”
Time and again, the methods used by imperialism are a clear indication of the criminal character of the system itself. These include numerous illegal wars, a global network of prison camps and legalized torture.
The two ruling parties, the judiciary and the mainstream press are in lock-step in the use of police state measures as an essential element in the human catastrophe called “the war on terror.”
