Black and White
I wrote a post last night about the Senate Hearing on the nomination of Michael Mukasey as the next Attorney General.
Thomas and Jeni have commented, each to an extent discussing what torture is. To Thomas the issue is black and white. Jeni isn't willing to go so far.
"Torture is defined by the United Nations Convention Against Torture as 'any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession....'" From Wikipedia.
By that definition, waterboarding would seem to me to be torture, not too many ways around it.
That said, Judge Mukasey regardless of whether he read up on the issue and regardless of whether he wants to remain vague was being disingenuous in this exchange:
“'I mean, either it is or it isn’t,' [Senator Sheldon] Whitehouse continued.
Waterboarding, he said, 'is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning. Is that constitutional?'
Mr. Mukasey again demurred, saying, 'If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.'
Mr. Whitehouse said he was 'very disappointed in that answer; I think it is purely semantic.'
'I’m sorry,' Mr. Mukasey replied." NYTimes.com, Oct. 18, 2007.
I'm sorry too.
3 comments:
Here's a thought: Subject him to an hour's worth and then ask him the question again.
Meanwhile, the debate rages about whether to rebuke the Ottoman Empire. I cannot understand these guys. It's getting harder and harder to blame it on incompetence.
Pos, he'd then have a real world frame of reference to inform his legal opinion.
Ron, they aren't incompetant. They live in another world.
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