They're Probably Going to Let This One Slide
October 28, 2007
Lawmakers: Mukasey Must Reject "Waterboarding"
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:12 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Michael Mukasey should be denied Senate confirmation as U.S. attorney general unless the retired judge denounces as torture the interrogation technique known as waterboarding, a top Democrat said on Sunday.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said Mukasey must declare such simulated drowning to be unlawful while two more Republicans said the nominee should clearly stake out a position against waterboarding.
"He should not be confirmed unless he is very, very clear about these aggressive techniques, which violate our laws and violate (the international) Geneva (convention on treatment of prisoners of war), as being totally unacceptable," Levin, a Michigan Democrat, told CBS's "Face the Nation."
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Mukasey isn't going to answer this without sufficient wiggle-room, because a whole landslide of litigation for past crimes by the CIA and Pentagon depend upon vagary.
Clearly, he isn't going to sit down in Gonzales's chair and preside over the deconstruction of terrorist interrogation.
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