[NYTr] 2 Key Useless Dems Cave In on Torture

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The World Socialist Web Site - Nov 2, 2007
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/muka-n03.shtml

Democrats cave in on torture: 

Key senators back attorney general nominee

By Bill Van Auken

Two key Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced
Friday afternoon that they will support the Bush administration’s
nominee for attorney general, former federal judge Michael Mukasey,
virtually assuring his confirmation as head of the US Justice
Department.

Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who originally proposed Mukasey
for the post, and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said that they
would vote in favor of the nominee. With the judiciary panel split 10-9
between the Democrats and Republicans—with all nine Republicans already
committed to backing Mukasey—this assures that the nomination will go
to the full Senate. As many as 20 Democrats are expected to back the
nomination, giving a comfortable 70 votes for confirmation.

Schumer declared that Mukasey was not his “ideal choice,” but praised
his “integrity and independence.” Feinstein declared, “He is not
Alberto Gonzales,” who left the Justice Department in the face of the
mounting scandal over the politically motivated firing of US attorneys.

Another Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Russ Feingold of
Wisconsin, also indicated he may vote for Mukasey. Calling him a
“marked improvement” over Gonzales, Feingold told the New York Times,
“He may be the best nominee we can get from this administration.”

The rallying of crucial Democratic support for Mukasey has taken place
in the context of a deepening controversy over the nominee’s refusal to
declare illegal the US government’s blatant use of torture against
those it has illegally detained around the globe.

Leading to an explicit defense of torture on the part of the
administration and its supporters, the entire debate has served to
expose the terminal decay of basic democratic processes and principles
within the United States under the combined impact of colonial war
abroad and the staggering growth of social inequality at home.

At the center of debate is the steadfast refusal of Mukasey to respond
directly or truthfully to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee
on whether waterboarding—the brutal and agonizing practice utilized by
the CIA, in which victims are strapped to boards and water is poured
over a cloth covering the mouth while they slowly suffocate—constitutes
illegal torture.

Bush spoke in support of Mukasey again Friday while in South Carolina
for a campaign fundraiser for Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading
Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I strongly urge the United States Senate to confirm this man, so that
I can have an attorney general to work with to protect the United
States of America from further attack,” said Bush.

The wording was significant in that it posed the paramount function of
the US attorney general as that of the president’s enforcer in the
so-called war on terrorism. Upholding the Constitution, protecting the
democratic rights of the people or enforcing the laws of the land as
well as international law are all regarded as superfluous in comparison
to this all-encompassing crusade in which all methods are valid,
including wars of aggression, illegal detention, waterboarding and
other forms of torture.

Meanwhile, one of the leading Republican presidential candidates, Fred
Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, weighed in on the debate
over Mukasey, indicating that as president he would support
waterboarding in the name of national security. “I’ve always thought
that when you get right down to it, the measures have to meet the
situation,” he said, after being asked if he would oppose the torture
method.

Bush also received support for the Mukasey nomination from two of the
most prominent newspapers in the country Friday.

In its lead editorial, the Washington Post lamented that “Mr. Mukasey
is being judged not on his merits but as a proxy for Bush.” The
editorial continued, “Yet critics of the nomination, while
understandably disturbed by Mr. Mukasey’s unwillingness to label
waterboarding illegal, may be working against the last, best hope to
see the rule of law reemerge in this administration.”

The distinction made by the Post between the criminality of the Bush
administration and Mukasey’s stonewalling during his Senate testimony
is nonsensical. The nominee’s “unwillingness to label waterboarding
illegal” has only one motive. He knows full well that this practice is
a violation of both national law and international treaties barring
torture and he is well aware that Bush, Cheney, the CIA and the entire
administration are criminally responsible for its use by American
interrogators.

By dodging the question, Mukasey is protecting this criminality and
making it clear that, like his predecessors, he will serve as a
defender of the illegal acts of the White House. So much for the Post’s
claim that he represents the “last, best hope” for restoring the rule
of law.

In feigning an even-handed approach, the Post goes on to suggest that,
instead of barring Mukasey’s nomination, the Senate should “do
something which, for all the rhetoric, they have so far declined to do:
ban torture.” Specifically, it called for the body to support a measure
introduced by Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, requiring all
US personnel, including the CIA, to limit themselves to interrogation
methods approved in the US Army Field Manual. The document bans
waterboarding, which has been recognized by the American military as a
form of torture for more than a century.

>From a legal standpoint, this is nonsense. The US Senate has passed
bans on torture over and over again by ratifying the Geneva Conventions
and Conventions against Torture, all of which make waterboarding an
international war crime. There is more than enough legal authority to
bring war crimes charges against Bush administration officials.

>From a political standpoint, the Post points to the two-faced character
of the Democratic opposition to torture. The Democrats will make noises
in the Senate when they think it serves their political advantage. But
they have refused to enact an explicit ban on waterboarding by the CIA,
for fear of charges that they are “soft on terrorism.”

The Democrats also fear a constitutional confrontation with the White
House. Both the administration and its nominee Mukasey have made it
clear that they do not believe that the president is bound by such laws
to the extent that they infringe upon his limitless power as commander
in chief under conditions of an unending war against terrorism.

Also weighing in on the Mukasey nomination Friday was the Wall Street
Journal in an editorial entitled “Mukasey and the Democrats.” The
Journal, whose editorial positions generally reflect the outlook of the
extreme right-wing clique that determines the policies of the Bush
administration, not surprisingly defended not only the nominee but
torture itself.

The editorial finds it incredible that Mukasey’s nomination has been
placed in doubt when his only “supposed offense is that he has refused
to declare ‘illegal’ a single interrogation technique that the CIA has
used on rare occasions against mass murderers.” In plainer words,
what’s all the fuss about a little torture against people who had it
coming any way?

The Journal defended Mukasey’s refusal to state an opinion on
waterboarding based on “hypothetical facts and circumstances,” on the
grounds that he had not yet been briefed on “the classified
interrogation details.” This was the same argument made by Bush the day
before.

The “classified interrogation details” cannot add much to the public
record. Waterboarding has been around since the Spanish Inquisition.
Known at various times as the “water cure” or “Chinese water torture,”
it has always been recognized as a means of torture. In 1902, an
American officer was court-martialed for inflicting it upon insurgents
in the Philippines. After World War II, Japanese military personnel
were prosecuted for war crimes for using it against POWs.

Even the present-day US State Department denounces the practice as
torture when it is used by other countries. When American personnel
carry it out, however, it is defended as an “enhanced interrogation
technique”—the same euphemism employed by the Nazis—that is
indispensable in the war on terror.

Mukasey’s evasion of the question means only that he will continue the
practice of his predecessors of defending torture and protecting the
chief torturers in the White House. And that is fine with the Journal.

“What’s really at stake here is whether US officials are going to have
the basic tools required to extract information from America’s
enemies,” the paper declares. It continues: “As for waterboarding, it
is mostly a political sideshow. The CIA’s view seems to be that some
version of waterboarding is effective in breaking especially tough
cases quickly.”

The Gestapo, it might be added, was of the same opinion. While the
scale of the latter’s use of these methods was no doubt greater than
that of the American intelligence agencies, the underlying contempt for
international law, democratic rights and human dignity are much the
same.

In concluding its editorial, the Journal makes the partisan—though
legitimate—point that the Democrats’ outrage over Mukasey’s position on
waterboarding is largely cynical.

It quotes a Democratic senator at a 2004 hearing: “I think there are
probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that
torture should never ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives
are at stake.... It is easy to sit back in the armchair and say that
torture can never be used, but when you are in the foxhole it is a very
different deal. And I respect, I think we all respect the fact that the
President is in the foxhole every day.”

The editorial identifies the senator as “New York Democrat Chuck
Schumer, who recommended Judge Mukasey for Attorney General in the
first place.”

Before announcing late Friday his decision to vote in favor of Mukasey,
Schumer had maintained a studied silence on the nomination since the
Senate confirmation hearings. On Friday, however, the New York Times
quoted him as saying: “No nominee from this administration will agree
with us on things like torture and wiretapping. The best we can expect
is somebody who will depoliticize the Justice Department and put rule
of law first, even when pressured by the administration. If Mukasey is
that type of person, I’ll support him.”

How an attorney general can “put the law first” while defending torture
and illegal wiretapping, the senior senator from New York did not
bother to explain.

Going by their record the Democrats are virtually certain to let
Mukasey’s nomination pass, while allowing all those for whom it is
politically expedient—including the party’s presidential nominees—to
vote against it. Such was the path taken in 2004 when the Democrats
refused to filibuster the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney
general, even though it was known that he played a leading role in
drafting the memos providing a pseudo-legal justification for torture.

The debate, in the end, has only served to expose once again the full
complicity of the Democratic Party in the wholesale attacks on
democratic rights carried out over the past six years, including the
legitimization of torture.

It bears noting that, in focusing the debate on waterboarding, the
Democrats have deliberately obscured other fundamental questions posed
in Mukasey’s testimony. The nominee voiced his agreement with the
position that the president as commander-in-chief has the inherent
constitutional power to override the law in the name of national
security.

It is this reactionary conception that underlies not only Mukasey’s
backhanded defense of torture, but also his upholding of the legality
of the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program. Of
course, on the latter issue, the Democratic-led Congress has already
largely bowed to the demands of the White House for warrantless
surveillance.

When pressed in the nomination hearing about his view that the
president’s executive powers allowed him to override the law, the
nominee answered: “We are not dealing here with black and white. Which
is why it’s very important that push not come to shove, because the
result could be not just divisive but disaster.”

None of the senators bothered to ask what kind of disaster Mukasey had
in mind. The most obvious answer would be the imposition of an outright
dictatorship.

Such are the ugly truths about the profound moral and political rot of
the American ruling establishment that have been laid bare by the
Mukasey nomination process.

Engaged in dirty wars of aggression and pursuing a predatory policy of
colonial conquest in the Middle East and Central Asia, the American
ruling elite has embraced torture as an instrument of policy. This has
found its hideous expression in Abu Ghraib and in the secret prisons of
the CIA around the globe.

Military aggression abroad is ultimately incompatible with democracy at
home. That the criminal practice of torture is now openly defended in
public debate in the US itself is a warning that America’s ruling
financial oligarchy is prepared to jettison the last vestiges of
democratic rights and employ these same methods at home in order to
keep hold of its power and wealth.