{"id":5183,"date":"2007-10-20T18:40:20","date_gmt":"2007-10-21T01:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=5183"},"modified":"2007-10-20T19:45:24","modified_gmt":"2007-10-21T02:45:24","slug":"bushs-ag-nominee-refuses-to-call-waterboarding-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=5183","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s A.G. Nominee Refuses to Call Waterboarding ‘Torture’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Blogged by Arlen Parsa<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

At his confirmation hearings this past week, Bush’s Attorney General nominee Mike Mukasey was asked by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) if he considered waterboarding a form of torture. Here’s an exchange<\/a> the two had:<\/p>\n

MUKASEY: If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.
\n…
\nSEN. WHITEHOUSE: If it’s torture. That’s a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn’t. Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding\u2026is constitutional?<\/p>\n

MUKASEY: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.<\/p>\n

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: I’m very disappointed in that answer. I think it is purely semantic.<\/p>\n

MUKASEY: I’m sorry.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mukasey’s refusal to categorize waterboarding as torture is troubling to say the least…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In a classified memo released after the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level officials signed off on dozens of controversial interrogation techniques, many of which are explicitly banned as war crimes under the legally binding UN Convention Against Torture<\/a> (UNCAT). Among the techniques referenced was waterboarding:
\n


\n
\n<\/center>
\nDownload the full memo here<\/a> (780kb PDF). The Department of Defense only refers to waterboarding in the most sterile and clinical terms, but it’s worth understanding how waterboarding actually works, in real life practice.<\/p>\n
STEP 1:<\/b> The victim’s hands and feet are tied down or shackled to a board and their head is held in place so they are not able to move<\/p>\n

STEP 2:<\/b> The end of the board with the victim’s feet tied to it is elevated so that their head is at the floor and their feet are several feet above them<\/p>\n

STEP 3:<\/b> A piece of wet plastic or fabric is used to constrain the air flow to the victim’s nose and mouth<\/p>\n

STEP 4:<\/b> Cold water is poured all over the victim’s body, head and face, creating a simulation of drowning which can sometimes result in permanent brain and lung damage or even death<\/p>\n

STEP 5:<\/b> The victim is made to believe that they are drowning (i.e. a form of simulated execution, explicitly banned under UNCAT), and that their interrogators will not stop until they admit guilt of their supposed crimes<\/div>\n

An early form of waterboarding was originally invented<\/a> during the Spanish Inquisition and it has been used by the Khmer Rouge. After World War II, the US captured a Japanese officer and convicted him of war crimes<\/a> after they discovered he had waterboarded an American civilian. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for using the exact same interrogation technique that high-level Bush Administration officials like ex-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Mukasey’s predecessor Alberto Gonzales have personally signed off on.<\/p>\n

If Musakey can’t call a spade a spade, and can’t call torture torture, he is not fit for the job of the top law enforcement official in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Blogged by Arlen Parsa At his confirmation hearings this past week, Bush’s Attorney General nominee Mike Mukasey was asked by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) if he considered waterboarding a form of torture. Here’s an exchange the two had: MUKASEY: If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional. … SEN. WHITEHOUSE: If it’s torture. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[223,233],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dept-of-justice","category-us-senate","bb-type-bradblog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5183"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=5183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}