Michael Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General focused attention on his refusal to admit waterboarding is torture. (Watch a demonstration of waterboarding for Current.tv by Kaj Larsen to make up your own mind.) But why should the focus be exclusively on Mukasey? Let's find out what everyone in Washington thinks.
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Is it torture? |
Is the U.S. doing it? |
Mukasey nomination |
| George Bush |
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| Dick Cheney |
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| Ed Gillespie, Counselor to President |
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10/31/07 "We don't know that it's been used by the government or ... confirmed by the US government." |
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Michael Hayden,
CIA Director |
10/31/07 "Judge Mukasey cannot nor can I answer your question in the abstract. I need to understand the totality of the circumstances in which this question is being posed before I can give you an answer." |
10/31/07 harsher interrogation techniques are used in "small, carefully run operations" that have been applied to fewer than 35 prisoners since 2002. |
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| Judge Advocates General (JAGs) |
11/3/07 "Waterboarding detainees amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances." |
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| Malcolm Nance, waterboarding supervisor |
11/1/07 “Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. When done right, it is controlled death. When performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Most people cannot stand to watch a high-intensity, kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American." |
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| Lindsay Graham (R-SC) |
10/28/07 "this technique violates Geneva Convention common article three, the War Crimes statutes, and many other statutes that are in place." |
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Supported on the basis of Mukasey's evasive letter and was quickly rewarded with a Bush fundraiser |
| Pat Leahy (D-VT) |
11/2/07 "No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding was used at least as long ago as the Spanish Inquisition. We prosecuted Japanese war criminals for waterboarding after World War II" |
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| John McCain (R-AZ) |
11/2/07 "waterboarding is by any definition torture and cannot be condoned." |
11/1/07 "I have been briefed enough to know we are not doing that today anywhere in America's government." |
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| Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) |
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| Chuck Schumer (D-NY) |
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11/2/01 "Under this administration, {the president’s} nominee will certainly never share our views on issues like torture and wiretapping." |
| Arlen Specter (R-PA) |
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10/25/07 "as I carefully read Judge Mukasey’s letter, I don’t know how much more he could say than what he has said, considering the exposure to people in collateral circumstances and considering the impossibility of predicting what may be faced with respect to a future potential danger, if the so-called ticking bomb hypothetical were to reach fruition." |
| Rudy Giuliani |
11/2/07 criticized Senator John McCain for his blanket rejection of waterboarding: "Intensive questioning has to be used; torture should not be used. The line between the two is a difficult one."
10/25/07 "I'm not sure it is either. It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it."
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| AP |
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10/31/07 "It is believed [by whom? And why should we believe them?] that fewer than five high-value detainees have been subjected to waterboarding, and the technique has not been used since 2003." |
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| NY Daily News |
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10/18/07 "used by CIA interrogators on Al Qaeda detainees Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah several years ago." |
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| U.S. Law |
1903 U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for waterboarding during the Spanish-American war |
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And who is responsible for authorizing waterboarding? Scott Horton says "Dick Cheney, David Addington, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Haynes and a handful of others."
Here's another question: was Congress actually briefed about the use of waterboarding?
| Ed Gillespie, Counselor to President |
10/31/07 "Members of the United States senate have been briefed on the program and they have said that it is -- it complies with all laws." |
| Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of Intelligence Committee |
10/31/07 “The Administration refused to disclose the program to the full Committee for five years, and they have refused to turn over key legal documents since day one. As I have said from the beginning, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to determine whether the program is the best means for obtaining reliable information, whether it is fully supported by the law, and whether it is in the best interest of the United States.” |
