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Bush, Dems and FISA (02-18-08)

Dec 10 , 2007

 NATIONAL SECURITY & CIVIL LIBERTIES ISSUES TEAM

MUKASY CONFIRMATION AS ATTORNEY GENERAL

ACTION

Michael Mukasey was confirmed by the Senate last night, to become the new Attorney General, despite his refusal to take an unequivocal stance against waterboarding torture of detainees.

Send comments of appreciation to Senator Sherrod Brown for voting against the nomination.    http://brown.senate.gov/contact/

ISSUE

Elisa Massimino of Human Rights First, and Malcolm Nance, a former navy instructor, say descriptions such as "simulated drowning technique" or "a technique that makes the victims think they are drowning" are incorrect and misleading euphemisms. Waterboarding involves the actual slowed process of suffocation and drowning, by preventing breathing and gradually filling the victim’s lungs with water.

The United States has officially considered waterboarding to be torture since the Spanish-American War, severely punished a Japanese officer convicted of waterboarding a United States citizen, and court martialled a U.S. soldier who practiced waterboarding in North Vietnam.
To practice torture in the United States is to renounce our own morality, and to increase the chances that our own captured soldiers will also be tortured. 
In his confirmation hearings, Mr. Mukasey refused to declare whether waterboarding was torture and illegal. He also suggested that the president’s Constitutional powers could supersede federal law in some cases.