Not a fan of that suggestion, Kevin. It just makes the Dems look like they can't take a position. If Mukasey's unacceptable, you have to vote no and say so.

Glenn: Well, the result of that will be 20 or maybe 30 Dems who vote against Mukasey, and his confirmation by a large bipartisan majority. That's just the reality. But if Reid could manage to pull off the abstentions (admittedly, hardly a sure thing), it might actually send a message.

I know that most of my commenters are routinely opposed to anything other than the most absolute opposition on all matters, but seriously, which is better? Everyone agreeing to abstain, or a split party and a bipartisan approval?

Something Shakespearean about that idea.

I can somehow picture Senators on the steps, clutching their robes, until suddenly someone shouts: "Et tu, Harry?"

Seriously, while the pundits and right-wingers would screech in rage, that action could be spun pretty effectively as a protest.

the plain fact is that we don't have the votes to defeat Mukasey anyway.

It's a damn shame that the GOP is still the majority in the Senate....

The problem, for me, with approving Mukasey is what he will do as AG versus what Keisler will do. Congressional approval of a torture judge will give a green light to institutionalizing the kinds of injustices the Department of Justice has been practicing the past several years. Keisler will not have the kind of power Mukasey will have, nor will the Dept. of Justice be as strong. In these times, I think a much weaker DOJ is preferable to putting an iron fisted authoritarian in charge of it. Congress would serve the nation better if they just defunded W. Bush's DOJ and shut it down for the next fifteen months.

I think that's a bad idea Kevin. Getting the entire party united behind essentially not taking a position? This reminds me Specter's (it was him, right?) "not proven" vote on impeachment. That was widely mocked, and I think the press would have much the same reaction to this.

Mukasey of course is a prime mover in the Giuliani campaign, so the idea that he less than Olsen would stay above interferring with the election is a false hope.

The question for me is why did he want the short-term thankless job? Methinks he has been promised a Supreme Court nomination by Giuliani, and Bush has suggested the same (or pass the idea on to a GOP successor).

You are missing the most important side effect of voting to allow Mukasey in, namely that by voting for him you are backing him, making Democrats complicit in whatever he ends up doing as AG. (This is the same sick dynamic that happened with the war vote - have you forgotten that already?) However bad Keisler is, he's not doing whatever he does with a Democratic stamp of approval. A Dem-confirmed Mukasey would be.

We are way past the time for this sort of strategic doublethink. If the nominee is bad, for chrissake JUST VOTE NO! No more footsie with these criminals.

WRT the Dem defectors, we need to see who's a Bush Dog and who isn't. For the former, let them eat primary challenges.

I actually think if there's anything they want before the presidential election, we should make them fight for it and accuse them of trying to pull the worst crime imagineable. As much as they try to get it into the media that it's Dem obstructionism, at this point people are going to get it that the Republicans are screwing around and not nominating someone who is consensus enough. Don't let them look like they can get reasonable things done right before the election when they spent 8 years fighting against that course as hard as they could. That's what's important right now.

Maybe I'm being just a bit contrarian, but if I have to pick an answer, that's the way I see it.

Is voting "present" actually an option? If so, how often is that used?

Don't let them look like they can get reasonable things done right before the election when they spent 8 years fighting against that course as hard as they could.

That is, if we let them have an uncontested nominee and they milk it, it makes them look like they're reasonable, when in reality insane partisanship has been their hard-and-fast rule, for a while. I mean, the guy basically was totally uncritical about waterboarding and other stepping-towards-torture practices.

Kevin Drum: I know that most of my commenters are routinely opposed to anything other than the most absolute opposition on all matters

Even had you bothered to defend that childishly petulant statement with examples or evidence, I suspect it would fail to demonstrate an extremism on our part that matches the absolute contempt you frequently--increasingly--show your readers when they disagree with you.

I think it's clear that if we vote Mukasey down, the voters won't respect us in the morning.

Wait, they don't respect us now? How did that happen?

I know that most of my commenters are routinely opposed to anything other than the most absolute opposition on all matters, but seriously, which is better? Everyone agreeing to abstain, or a split party and a bipartisan approval?

Well, consider me an absolutist when it comes to torture -- a subject on which Mukasey is nothing but absolutely vague. I'd like my party to be absolutist on the issue, too. For my money, that means saying "no," not "no comment."

Personally, I find the way that torture doesn't seem to be of much concern to the nominee as...frightening. Perhaps that is the intent?

I was pretty busy this week, but early in the week, Mukasey was calling the torture memo worse than a sin and said "Judge Mukasey also underscored the need for America to retain the moral high ground on the issue of torture. "It's antithetical to everything this country stands for," he said. Noting that American troops freed victims of torture from Nazi concentration camps in World War II, the judge added, "We didn't do that so we could duplicate it ourselves.""

Can someone explain how the guy that said the above was later on determined to be another Alberto?

Matthew Rothschild wrote yesterday:

When he was a judge, one detainee came to his courtroom and said, through his lawyer, that he’d been abused by his guards and had the bruises to prove it. “He looks fine to me,� Mukasey said.

This callous attitude about brutality, and this Cheney-esque attitude about the powers of the Presidency disqualify Mukasey for the post of leading law enforcement official in the USA.

"the plain fact is that we don't have the votes to defeat Mukasey anyway."

This isn't true. It only takes one senator to put a hold on Mukasey's nomination. The Republicans used this tactic many times with Clinton's nominees. Chris Dodd currently has a hold on the FISA bill. All we need is one senator to prevent Mukasey from even getting a vote.

Better? Worse? Cut the kabuki. The sole purpose of the AG is to say "It's legal!" while the Cheneyites do whatever the fuck they want.

What a joke.

Can someone explain how the guy that said the above was later on determined to be another Alberto?

Because he later made it clear when asked for details and was unwilling to state whether or not waterboarding constituted torture, that his bar for defining torture is just as high as AG's.

It's a damn shame that the GOP is still the majority in the Senate....

Claire "bitter disappointment" McCaskill tilted it Dem but you really can't tell. She never takes a step, casts a vote or utters a syllable without first checking her WWJTD bracelet. (What Would Jim Talent Do?)

Well, consider me an absolutist when it comes to torture -- a subject on which Mukasey is nothing but absolutely vague. I'd like my party to be absolutist on the issue, too. For my money, that means saying "no," not "no comment."

Amen and halle-fucking-lujah!

Shameless plug for a fellow KC blogger: WWJTD sprung from the wonderfully complex mind of Dan at Gone Mild on a comment he left at my site. I just have this obsession with giving credit where it is due. (Probably from writing and grading so damned many research papers over the years...)

Thanks Brojo, Dispute.

Well let me channel Anne Landers then and suggest we don't say "No", but say, "No thank you".

Little did Congress know that the war powers they gave to Bush and New AG Michael Mukasey thoughts about Article II makes BUSH the Imperial President/King. Bush not to leave office on January 20, 2009.

Well, consider me an absolutist when it comes to torture -- a subject on which Mukasey is nothing but absolutely vague. I'd like my party to be absolutist on the issue, too. For my money, that means saying "no," not "no comment."

Amen and halle-fucking-lujah!
Posted by: Blue Girl, Red State (aka G.C.) on October 20, 2007 at 2:31 PM | PERMALINK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I second that!

Kevin: "like it or not, we don't have the votes to defeat Mukasey anyway."

You sound exactly like Union Gen. George B. McClellan in 1862, who always believed his Army of the Potomac to be outnumbered by a Confederate enemy that was, more often than not, but half his command's size.

Anyway, we still have the filibuster, in which a single senator can place a hold on the nomination. For a change, let's watch the Republicans try to muster the 60 votes needed for cloture.

Remember, folks, we really don't have a majority. There are 49 Dems in the Senate, plus Lieberman and Sanders, who caucus with us. Sanders would probably join us in voting down Mukasey, but that's still only 50 votes.

And of course, the plain reality is that there are at least half a dozen Dems who just flat wouldn't vote against him too. It's too bad, but there you have it. However, it's possible that they might join in a mass abstention. I don't know if it's likely, but it's possible. And if Dems could hang together on that, it would send more of a message than a split caucus with a few yes votes and a few no votes.

But Jerry raises a good question: Can you vote "present" in the Senate? I'm not sure about that. But the equivalent would be showing up for the quorum call and then not voting, I suppose.

Anyway, it's just a thought. I'm trying to figure out a way to send some kind of clear message about torture in spite of the fact that I know perfectly well we can't keep the Dem caucus united to vote against Mukasey. Other ideas are welcome.

Kevin Drum: "I know that most of my commenters are routinely opposed to anything other than the most absolute opposition on all matters, ..."

Even had you bothered to defend that childishly petulant statement with examples or evidence, I suspect it would fail to demonstrate an extremism on our part that matches the absolute contempt you frequently--increasingly--show your readers when they disagree with you.
Posted by: shortstop

Didn't Mukasey say, "Whatever comes from the right is bad and should not be tolerated and whatever comes from the left is good and should be welcomed"?

No? Must have been someone else.

And ms ss, I do believe your are the world record holder in making "childishly petulant" statements.

Kevin, in answer to your question, it doesn't appear you can actually vote "present" in the Senate, like you can in the House. Not voting would be the same thing, of course.

If the Dems feel it important to oppose Mukasey, then I think Reid should crack the whip and get that 20 or 30 you think would otherwise vote for Mukasey down to the single-digit territory. If the Dems voted, say, 40-9 against, which I think is doable if you make it a point of party strategy, then I think that would be sufficient to send the message that this is the GOP candidate, even if he'd still get through (as of course he would under Kevin's absention suggestion).

Why, oh why, would we want to encourage the Dem proclivity for spinelessness? If the man has doubts
about torture and the Preznit's ability to do whatever the ef he wants, I say the correct vote would be not just no but: "Hell no".

I for one think Kevin's absolutely right that a lot of comments on this blog (and on other blogs) are strangely absolutist. I'm not the oldest guy on the block, but I've been very interested in and supportive of liberal causes for about 8 years, and known plenty of liberals during the course of that, and the difference between dealing with those liberals of known in person and these people that deal on the internet is marked and definite. I've never really experience pointed and uncomfortable disagreements with liberals until I started hanging out on the left blogosphere, and the liberals I'm talking about when I mention the liberals I've known in person have been youth activists and non-profit workers, basically people who have made fighting for these causes their life's work, or would be willing to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience to make a point.

You see...the problem with the whole 'absolutist' thing is...we've tried the compromise. More often than not, despite holding the advantage, it's always the Dems who have to concede something for the compromise. ALWAYS. The REpublicans have rarely been forced to compromise anything when one is reached. It's the Dems who have been forced to make concessions.

And we've tried reaching out across the aisle, only for the aisle to be moved to the point that anything left of Limbaugh is considered a Dirty ****ing Hippie.

The reason why people are 'absolutist' because no one has bothered to make a stand save a few souls who tend to instantly get thrown under the bus for the sake of 'bipartisanship' which almost always favors the Republicans.

We've caved on FISA. We've caved on Habeas. People WANT to make a stand on torture, and the moment Mukasey waffled on the issue of torture, ESPECIALLY when he seemed to make such a nice stand the first day, that's the moment a lot of us wanted to make a stand and fight.

Are some of us being unreasonable? Maybe...but when you've been tossed under the bus and radicalized by your own party for such a simple stand as 'NO TORTURE', you tend to get a bit hysterical, especially when it seems like reasonable discourse these days is instantly singled out as radical, leftist behavior.

I have, myself, full confidence that if the Senate does its duties, if nothing is neglected, and if the best votes are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our American home, to ride out the storm of Bush, and to outlive the menace of Cheney, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

At any rate, that is what we are going to do. That is the resolve the the people's elected Congress - every one of them. That is the will of the people and the nation.

Even though many large tracts of this country and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Republicans and all the odious apparatus of Bush rule, we shall not flag or fail.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in Washington,
We shall fight in the Senate and the House,
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the electorate, we shall defend our democracy, whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight against torture,
we shall fight against illegal surveillance,
we shall fight against illegal war,
we shall fight against corporate government;
we shall never surrender.

"Remember, folks, we really don't have a majority. There are 49 Dems in the Senate, plus Lieberman and Sanders, who caucus with us. Sanders would probably join us in voting down Mukasey, but that's still only 50 votes."

Kevin, you are correct about not having a majority. But we don't need a majority to BLOCK something. We need 41 senators to sustain a filibuster. Or we need one senator to put a hold on the vote. The Republicans blocked dozens of Clinton nominees with less than 41 votes. Is this technique suddenly off-limits now that the Democrats control the Senate?

If the nominee can't define torture, then he shouldn't receive the approval of the Democratic leadership of the Senate. I find it hard to believe that Reid (and others) cannot speak to that failure making it the centerpiece of the opposition.
I do realize the Senate operates differently than the House and the ability to coerce fellow senators is limited (at least on the Democratic side), but to a certain extent this is about PRINCIPALLED absolute opposition: the Democratic party is against torture. Plain and simple. It should be mentioned in any and every speech about this nomination. If the leadership pushes that, it should be extremely difficult for any Democrat to vote for Mukasey.

Kevin's suggestion makes too much sense to ever be considered by the Democratic Senators. What a bunch of pussies!

Excuse me, but why can't Democrats say they won't approve any nominee that won't say that torture--all torture--is against the law? Why would that be so tough? Democrats are basically saying that they do not understand issues relating to foreign policy, national security, and defense. They are the "little kids" party, not the "grownups" party. How do they expect to win elections like this?

If it is true the Democrats in the Senate cannot prevent Mukasey from being confirmed, they should fail fighting rather than acquiesce with any support for the president's appointee.

majarosh: And ms ss, I do believe your are the world record holder in making "childishly petulant" statements.

I make my fair share of them as a commenter here, that's for sure. I also hold my own in kvetching, bitching, snarking, wailing and dramatizing. But, you will as usual be the last to comprehend, the "petulant statement" aspect wasn't the central point of my comment.

If I treated my blog readers' opinions with ongoing disdain--and what's more, if my latest round of contempt capped off a week of imploring the readers I continually scorn to pony up to support my salary--you would, probably for the first time here, have a valid comparison.

shortstop,

Thanks for the tinkling, if not ringing, endorsement. I understood perfectly your central point. Don't neccessarily agree with it, but since you've been around here much longer than I have, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
I merely thought it was ironic, maybe intentionally, that you accused someone of making a "childishy petulant statement" while making, IMO, a somewhat childishly petulant statement. Oh well.

Anyway, I really would like to discuss the topic.

Mukasey option: Vote "present"?

If you're going to accept him as the "least bad" option, at least send a signal.

That said, I disagree with Kevin and Neil. It sends a better message to not confirm him.

Or I should say, when I've known liberals in person, maybe they haven't liked things I've said or done that had to do with activism or my statements about politics sometimes (I'm sure that's what happened, but not more than one or two particular incident sticks out in my recollection), but never, never, have I had people I've known in person just start sailing into me with insults, without even taking a breath, after I offered an opinion. That people do this to me on this website like 12 times in a week is a lot different. In fact, all the liberals I've known in person never insulted me and called me names at all, to my face.

Now for my 2 cents.

Shumer's nominee for AG wasn't asked if waterboarding is torture. If he had, he'd be an idiot to answer yes or no. Imagine the headlines the next day with either answer.
Waterboarding is a term for an interrogation technique. Whether it falls under the definition of torture depends largely upon what other methods are used in conjunction with it and the extent to which it is used.
Question: If a detainee is restrained and a cloth is placed over his face, is that torture? What if one ounce of water is poured on the cloth? Two ounces? I'm not trying to be absurd and I'm not a sadist. I'm attempting to show the confines of Makasey's testimony.
He testified that if waterboarding was torture it would be unlawful, if it was not torture it would not be unlawful. It's clear that certain actions are torture and, likewise, certain actions are not torture, regardless of what anyone calls them. The man is under oath and simply trying to answer truthfully. At every question when he was asked if torture could be legally ordered, or if someone could have immunity from commiting torture, his response was an unequivocal, "No."
Furthermore, he stated under oath that if the President allowed acts that he, as AG, had judged to be unconstitutional, he would resign.
Torture is illegal. Torture is unconstitutional.
That was the thrust of his testimony regarding torture.

OK, that was a little more than 2 cents.

That people do this to me on this website like 12 times in a week is a lot different. In fact, all the liberals I've known in person never insulted me and called me names at all, to my face.

Well, if we had ever met in person, rest assured I would call you a fuckwit to your face. And probably encourage people around to point and laugh.

Morals
-----
If this were the first year of the Bush presidency, I'd think differently. It'd be valuable to send Bush a message that he can't nominate jackasses who claim not to know whether waterboarding is torture.

Uh, WT# have Bush and strategy got to do with anything? You cant confirm a guy who will torture because that makes you responsible for the torture of the next innocent German, Canadian or Iraqi kid and it makes you responsible for the next person who is tortured to death.

It makes you responsible for the next in the list of African and Pakistani inteligence chiefs who says of disappearing political players "ohh no, its okay, you see America does it too!" (In one afternoon at PBS.org I came across video of two "secret police" chiefs making this argument! In fact the Pakistani guy, when confronted with a camera just says it over and over again!)

Just explain the republicans that you consider chaining someone to the ground, naked and leaving them to freeze to death in an Afghan winter night as immoral a way of getting information (??) as they consider abortion an immoral method of birth control. (its murder, so... so thats only slightly better than teaching kids about condoms.)

Why can they have a moral litmus test and the people who have to puke at the idea of being responsible for the torture of innocent people and torturing people to death just have to swallow it as if its forced down their throat while being held upside down?

I am a European who travels by train a lot. I know what I am saying. In fact if there could ever be a jewish carriage I would sit in it so in a world without US torture I would be bombed first. Did you know big (but clumsily improvised) bombs have been found on German trains? There is no need for those sick US funded ESAG tv ads to convince the traintravelers of France, the UK and Germany about the danger of terrorism. (Hell in train stations in Paris there still are armed soldiers! I saw them a while ago at a German airport... In the UK subways there may only be undercover police agents... but they actually shoot people with the wrong skin color in the head... several times.)

Logic
----
Of all the ways of "legalerizing" torture messing with the definition is the worst. Besides "making we should never torture" and "we don`t "torture"" sound equally moral it has the tiny side effect of making waterboarding possible for anyone and every one. At least if you are gonna go with "war time exceptions" or whatever then the orders to torture could somehow be limited to some some specific suspicions on some defined "battlefield" or something... You know, non white Muslim people!

In this "debate" noone mentions but everyone assumes that white Americans will not be tortured.
Its the argument every pro-torture politician uses, and noone has to say out loud!
IF something isn`t torture that means its a normal legal interrogation procedure a US cop can use on you and me during a normal interrogation. And being brought in for questioning doesn`t take much.

Okay I will compose myself and talk at least tactics
----
Whats is with the "we" don`t have the votes? Did McCain have to become pro-torture when he found religio..us voters? At the next hearing just run trough the list of things done to Vietnam POW`s and ask Mukasey to give his guesstimate on whether they constitute torture or not. Yeah I heard what McCain said during the debates, I don`t care what he says I care how he votes after being explained how simple this issue is. In fact tying McCain in a stress position to listen to the answer at full volume over and over again would not be prosecuted so I recommend doing that to!

Seriously there is no reason why one should limit the "is this torture" questions to the list of "approved" techniques. Mixing it up can even reveal the hypocrisy and the weird constant aversion to things that leave marks and scars on other places than American souls.

There must be other republicans left who are unwilling to confirm a pro-torture guy for justice? And why would republicans be sticking with Bush who is doing zero for the GOP? Who of the republicans looking to leave soon have any motivation to stick with Bush? Not exploring this with hearing after hearing and hour after hour of Mukasey not defining torture would be plain tactical incompetence if not the wrong thing to do.

I believe Mukasey doesn`t like saying these things. Just listen to his voice as he says "I am sorry" right after redefining torture. And I suspect the nazi comparison he made reveals an emotional view behind his thinking. There is only one reason not to make him say this over and over again until either he feels comfortable saying it for the record on c-span or cracks. The reason for not doing this is keeping the record as vague as possible to try and downplay the issue when the time to vote comes. I guess i don`t want to see any winners in that.

Loosing composure again
---
Torture was the probably the one thing about which I was absolutist. Torture laws are absolute for a reason. But I found another issue. I read the US has 13 and 14 year olds serve mandatory life sentences in a "normal" prison eventhough their physical disability makes it questionable whether they committed the crime for which older accomplices finger them in which no one died and their public defender gets convicted weeks after "defending" them.

These kids get raped for life by the justice system.

http://eji.org

Only the party and church which cover up predators in their ranks could ignore this. And the heritage foundation defends it by saying 73 kids are "negligible". Apparently David Muhlhausen doesn`t know what neglecting children is illegal. And when non Christian religious nuts convict an adult to be group raped by the village everyone is up in arms.

So now might not be the right time to ask me for a moral compromise... but I am willing to let Mukasey do whatever he wants to whatever adults he wants as long as he gets these kids out of gen-pop. Only the US and Somalia have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

As the European who knows the US best of everyone in the room 99% of the time I could have been so popular for years by expertly trashing the US every day since I first heard about hooded US agents tying someone to a trolley, cutting his clothes away, inserting a sedative repository, putting on diapers and rolling him into a private jet IIRC somewhere in Scandinavia. I understood everyone involved to have somewhat defensible misguided intentions.

The moment I read that I understood I would be seeing someone struggling to define torture on cspan. It took a while and I didn`t forsee it would be a confirmation hearing, but here we are. That coinciding with the telco amnesty I could take... but this.

I could have trashed every defender of America. I could talk about housing projects, how China evacuated 1.5 million people before a hurricane struck (not sure if they came back to find their houses at the bottom of a hydroelectric lake) and how it wasn`t just Afghanistan where the US had Islamic radicals do the dirty fighting but Bosnia as well, something islamo-fascist hating conservatives considered the better alternative to US troops.... (Google awacs downtime, air Iran not having enough capacity, the revolutionary guard and black c130`s) Hell I read the British "dossier" so I knew the WMD thing was as BS in Iraq as the biological weapons were in Cuba and the Uranium program was in North Korea. We will get better answers about Syria in a year or so. (RRW, NPT/India, ABM, Test ban, anthrax... etc)

I could have trashed the US but I didn`t. Until the US ratifies the Convention on the Rights of the Child before Somalia does I am anti-American. These people sensed something long before my newspapers confronted me. Thats not easy for someone who on my bikeride to school drove past a big WWII graveyard with allied soldiers every day.

I guess it wont be long before I start convincing Europeans to think of the US as Mexico with nukes. I could say that the US is the places where when leaving some high school building you see two signs of wealth: the SUV of armed drugdealers looking for new employees and the Humvee of the army recruiters.

I've never even had a heated argument over politics or activisty stuff with a liberal in person before (as far as I can remember), except for my fraternal twin brother, which doesn't count.

That's how much of a teddy bear and a sweetie-pie I am.

That's all well and good - but these are times that call for fire-breathin', knee-cappin' fight-the-fuck-back, knock-down, drag-out, bare-knuckled politics.

This ain't the '70's and nobody gives a rat's ass what anyones elses sign is...

If you want to seek common ground and all that happy horseshit, do it on the fringes the hell out of our way.

Drum:

There's really no good solution here — and like it or not, we don't have the votes to defeat Mukasey anyway.

But your party has a mandate!

We definitely shouldn't allow a confirmation vote on Mukasey UNTIL he reads the Bradbury Memo and is willing to publicly express a firm opinion both on its legality and on whether waterboarding is or is not torture. We lose nothing by at least forcing him to take a public stand on those very important issues.

Kevin,

There is no "truth" here. Only the road to more self deception. People can't run away from the fight any longer.

Waterboarding is a term for an interrogation technique. Whether it falls under the definition of torture depends largely upon what other methods are used in conjunction with it and the extent to which it is used.

Good lawd what a bunch of f-ing BS.

That being said, you should send in your resume to the DoJ. You'll fit right in, perhaps even be allowed to write the next Yoo memo But don't ever expect to be treated with any respect from normal human beings who know what is and isn't torture.

Disputo,
If you "know what is and isn't torture" than answer the question.

Question: If a detainee is restrained and a cloth is placed over his face, is that torture? What if one ounce of water is poured on the cloth? Two ounces?

Question: If a detainee is restrained and a cloth is placed over his face, is that torture? What if one ounce of water is poured on the cloth? Two ounces? I'm not trying to be absurd and I'm not a sadist. I'm attempting to show the confines of Makasey's testimony.

Question: If majarosh's mother is blindfolded & strapped down to a reclining gurney and a cloth is placed over her face, is that torture? What if one ounce of water is poured on the cloth in order to elicit her gag reflex? Two ounces? What if enough water is poured on the cloth to make her think that she's drowning and about to die? Is that torture? What if she's tied to a post, and the barrel of a gun is pressed against her temple? Is that torture? What if the gun is cocked and the trigger is pulled, but no bullet fires? Is that torture? What if this is repeated not once, but several times? Is that torture? I'm not trying to be absurd and I'm not a sadist. I'm simply demonstrating the despicably narrow confines of majarosh's moral universe.

Doesn't anyone have the courage to answer my questions?

Is anyone capable of responding to a simple question any way other than avoiding the question and making personal attacks on the questioner?

Post after post in this thread have accused Mukasey of saying waterboarding is not torture. He NEVER said that. He was never asked the question. He said torture was unconstitutional. He said if waterboarding was torture, it would be unconstitutional.

Save your personal attacks for someone who gives a shit about what you think about them.

Post after post in this thread have accused Mukasey of saying waterboarding is not torture. He NEVER said that. He was never asked the question. He said torture was unconstitutional. He said if waterboarding was torture, it would be unconstitutional.

Funny that you should get whiny & insistent that your question be addressed when the point here is that Mukasey refused to answer the question he was asked -- whether or not waterboarding was constitutional. Rather than acknowledge that torture, as defined by the UN Convention on Torture (of which the United States is a signatory), includes the practice of waterboarding, Mukasey simply reverted to ambiguous "if... then" statements. The problem isn't that he's claiming that waterboarding isn't torture. We already know that it is. The problem is that he won't acknowledge that fact and address its constitutionality. Where's your indignation over the fact that that question wasn't addressed?

Save your personal attacks for someone who gives a shit about what you think about them.

Funny, too, that you feel yourself to be the only one allowed to present hypotheticals. Apparently, hypotheticals that undercut your reasoning are merely personal attacks. Newsflash: torture isn't some nebulous concept just hanging out there in the ether. It's a practice that's affected countless lives in recent years, and it's a practice for which we're responsible. Many of those lives belong to innocent people -- people like your mother. Folks like you would rather describe these practices in vague terms & abstract contexts, because then there aren't any consequences to them. You might start by pulling up your skirt & addressing the questions I posed at 1:26 p.m., but that would require that you deal with that kind of messiness that you & Mukasey prefer to avoid. Jackasses, both of you.

Here's a couple "If...then...." for you.

If "waterboarding" is mentioned in the UN Convention on Torture, I'll eat my hat.

If "I'm simply demonstrating the despicably narrow confines of majarosh's moral universe" and "Jackasses, both of you" are "hypotheticals that undercut your (my) reasoning" and not personal attacks, I'll eat my hat.

If "waterboarding" is mentioned in the UN Convention on Torture, I'll eat my hat.

As Article 1 of the Convention makes clear, torture is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

That's exactly what waterboarding is & does.

For more on why waterboarding is torture, see here & here.

Still waiting for you to explain why it's not torture to waterboard your mother. I won't hold my breath. Jackass.