Panel Pushes for Nominee to Denounce Technique

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — All 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed Michael B. Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, on Tuesday for a clear-cut statement that the interrogation technique known as waterboarding, which simulates drowning and has been used by the C.I.A. against terrorism suspects, is illegal.

In his confirmation hearings last week, Mr. Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, declined to say if waterboarding was torture or was otherwise illegal; he insisted he was not aware of how the technique was carried out.

In their letter to Mr. Mukasey on Tuesday, the committee’s chairman, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, and the panel’s other nine Democrats said they found it “surprising that you are unfamiliar with waterboarding since it has been the subject of much public discussion” and asserted that “your unwillingness to state that waterboarding is illegal may place Americans at risk of being subject to this abusive technique.”

The letter continued, “Please respond to the following question: Is the use of waterboarding, or inducing the misperception of drowning, as an interrogation technique illegal under U.S. law, including treaty obligations?” The senators requested a “prompt response” since Mr. Mukasey’s nomination is still before the committee.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Mr. Mukasey could not comment on details of interrogation techniques because “he has not been read into classified intelligence programs, and he won’t be read in until he is confirmed as attorney general.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/washington/24mukasey.html?ex=1350878400&en=77ca72d4033dd386&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[PSPS]

1. Why the charade? The dems are reliable cowards who will vote to confirm anyway.

[D23MIURG23]

2. Leahy isn't always

Although it seems to me he let all his subpeonas go unanswered without much of a fight (at least thats my impression, the congressional investigations seemed to drop out of the news rather suddenly). In any case, I wouldn't necessarily put it past him to hold up a nominee.

[gratuitous]

3. The question has been asked and answered

Don't give this clueless incompetent another bite at the apple. It should be screamingly obvious by now that Mr. Mukasey is either a total idiot, and therefore not suited to be Attorney General; or another in a long line of Republican sycophants who will put politics above principle in discharging his duties, and once again not suited to be Attorney General. If any further evidence was needed, it came from mouthpiece Fratto, who is clearly running interference for Mukasey.

Reject this nominee, and tell the White House to try again. What's so hard about this?

[cali]

4. keisler n/t

[rhett o rick]

5. Agree 100%. nm

[rhett o rick]

6. Mukasey said he wasn't familiar with the technique of waterboarding. Either he is

an idiot or a liar. Hard to choose for a BushCorp appointee. In any event if he is lying he needs to be prosecuted.