The Times headline tells us the “Nominee’s Stand May Avoid Tangle of Torture Cases,” but further down we finally read that the “tangle” is the possible indictment of the President of the United States for war crimes:
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/11/01/mukasey-waterboards-lindsey-graham/ Scott L. Silliman, an expert on national security law at Duke University School of Law, said
any statement by Mr. Mukasey that waterboarding was illegal torture “would open up Pandora’s box,” even in the United States. Such a statement from an attorney general would override existing Justice Department legal opinions and create intense pressure from human rights groups to open a criminal investigation of interrogation practices, Mr. Silliman said.
“You would ask not just who carried it out, but who specifically approved it,” said Mr. Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke. “Theoretically, it could go all the way up to the president of the United States; that’s why he’ll never say it’s torture,” Mr. Silliman said of Mr. Mukasey.T
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/washington/01mukasey.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.................
Is This Torture?
This post has a
video with excerpts of a man being waterboarded. Decide for yourself.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kaj-larson/a-lesson-for-mukasey-why_b_70651.html#postCommentLots of attempts to say torture is a gray issue in the video, I notice. Lots of talk about defining and regulating it. I admit to being a good (old-style) conservative on this issue. Principle: no torture. Exceptions: none. Defition of torture: oh come on, stop weaseling. One of the few things I agree with Dershowitz on -- we all know what's torture, we all know the US is doing it and let's stop pretending.
http://agonist.org/ian_welsh/20071031/is_this_torture