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Talking Points Memo is reporting that Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, is still refusing to label water boarding illegal, despite indications that the refusal could sink his nomination. From the AP:
President Bush’s nominee for attorney general told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that he does not know whether waterboarding is illegal. He pledged to study the matter and to reverse any Justice Department finding that endorses a practice that violates the law or the Constitution.
Mukasey should look to history for guidance. According to a 2005 ABC News report, “water boarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in Vietnam 40 years ago” and in 1901, during the Spanish-American war.
“The soldier who participated in water torture in January 1968 was court-martialed within one month after the photos appeared in The Washington Post, and he was drummed out of the Army,” recounted Darius Rejali, a political science professor at Reed College.
Earlier in 1901, the United States had taken a similar stand against water boarding during the Spanish-American War when an Army major was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for water boarding an insurgent in the Philippines.
Similarly, in 1947 “the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.” Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
Despite being historically ignorant, Mukasey’s indecision leaves the United States on the wrong side of international law. Just today, a new U.N. report on human rights expressed concern about “enhanced interrogation techniques reportedly used by the CIA,” saying that under international law, “there are no circumstances in which cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment may be justified.”
According to Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, the administration’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” is not without international repercussions.
[Other countries] say why are you criticising us if the US, the most democratic country with the oldest history of human rights, if they are torturing you should first go there. It has a negative effect because the US is a very powerful and important country and many other countries take the US as a model.
Unfortunately, Mukasey’s refusal to outlaw water boarding will continue this trend. As Andrew Sullivan points out: “In seven years, the US has gone from being a beacon of human rights to an enabler and legitimizer of torture in regimes not even Cheney would find savory.”