Despite his torturous semantic dodges when asked whether he considered waterboarding torture, Judge Michael Mukasey appears to have enough votes on the Senate Judiciary Committee to have his nomination as attorney general sent to the full Senate. His confirmation is all but certain, and that’s not the travesty some administration critics are claiming. People are so ashamed and fed up with President Bush’s perverse defense of abominable interrogation practices that they saw Mukasey’s linguistic hairsplitting over waterboarding as a deal-killer for his nomination. When asked during Judiciary Committee
hearings if he believed waterboarding fit the definition of torture and was therefore illegal, Mukasey would only say, “I don’t know what’s involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”
Here’s a helpful description of what’s involved in the technique from Evan Wallach, a former military judge in the Nevada National Guard and now a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York. Wallach also teaches the law of war as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and New York Law School.
“The media usually characterize the practice as ‘simulated drowning,’41;” Wallach wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post. “That’s incorrect.
“To be effective, waterboarding is usually realdrowning that simulatesdeath. That is, the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut.
“The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding’s effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.”
Outside the Bush administration, there has never been any doubt that waterboarding is torture, and there is little doubt that Mukasey is opposed to the technique, which he called “repugnant.” Mukasey told Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., that if Congress passed a law specifically banning waterboarding, Mukasey would enforce the law.
That ought to galvanize congressional Democrats and Republicans running for re-election. With public approval ratings for Congress even lower than for Bush, a law specifically banning waterboarding is a way to recapture public confidence.
To draw Republican support, the law shouldn’t be retroactive. What’s done is done, and the blame for past transgressions belongs entirely to Bush.
Congress can force Bush to show his true colors on torture. Would he really veto a bill outlawing waterboarding? Bring it on.