A Whitehouse exchange with Mukasey today:

"Is waterboarding constitutional?" he was asked by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, in one of today’s sharpest exchanges. "I don’t know what is involved in the technique," Mr. Mukasey replied. "If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional." Mr. Whitehouse described Mr. Mukasey’s response as a "massive hedge" since Mr. Mukasey refused to be drawn into a conversation over whether waterboarding, which has been used by the Central Intelligence Agency to question terrorist suspects, amounted to torture. "It either is or it isn’t," the senator continued. "Waterboarding is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, tying them down, putting cloth over their faces, and then pouring water over them to simulate drowning. Is that constitutional?" Mr. Mukasey repeated his answer: "If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional." Mr. Whitehouse said he was "very disappointed in that answer — I think it is purely semantic." "I’m sorry," Mr. Mukasey replied.

Well, if waterboarding isn't torture, than what is? Would Mukasey reject extreme sleep deprivation, cold temperatures and other non-physical methods as rising to the level of torture? Even though those methods were precisely the ones used by the Gestapo and the KGB/Cheka?

I swear, all this tells me is that there is not a good Republican left in this country, if a supposedly decent man like Mukasey cannot accept that waterboarding IS TORTURE.

If he doesn't think it is, why doesn't he do some first-hand research?

Hey Judge, how about looking into some of the horrible renditions we've been committing on American soil?

When otherwise decent men use such language to justify state terror against innocent people, many of us know that our country has crossed an important line separating good from evil.

Only time will tell whether we as a people can bring ourselves back from the brink.

NOTE: dhonig has a great cartoon downthread in his comment.

Hesiod notes downthread:

Even persons who were only suspected of opposing any of the policies of the German occupation authorities were arrested, and on arrest were interrogated by the Gestapo and the SD in the most shameful manner. On 12th June, 1942 the Chief of the SIPO and SD published, through Mueller, the Gestapo Chief, an order authorising the use of "third degree" methods of interrogation, where preliminary investigation had indicated that the person could give information on important matters, such as subversive activities, though not for the purpose of extorting confessions of the prisoner's own crimes. This order provided: Third degree may, under this supposition, only be employed against Communists, Marxists, Jehovah's Witnesses, saboteurs, terrorists, members of resistance movements, parachute agents, anti-social elements, Polish or Soviet Russian loafers or tramps; in all other cases my permission must first be obtained .... Third degree can, according to circumstances, consist amongst other methods of very simple diet (bread and water), hard bunk, dark cell, deprivation of sleep, exhaustive drilling, also in flogging (for more than twenty strokes a doctor must be consulted).

So when otherwise supposedly decent people like Mukasey cannot categorically say that such practices are torture, can we say that justice is even possible in this country right now?

***UPDATE*** From CA Libertarian:

From Amnesty International: "The Bush administration continues to astonish. Its own State Department has labeled waterboarding torture when it applies to other countries. Yet in President Bush's legal wonderland, waterboarding is renamed an enhanced interrogation technique. President Bush continues to assert that his administration is complying with U.S. and international law, yet every available fact has proven the contrary. Torture by any other name is still torture - a new name does not make the practice acceptable or even palatable."

And from Weelzup, who researched in Wikipaedia.

I think the case is clear to anyone who isn't hiding under a rock.

***2nd Update*** Chacounne movingly writes below, just in case someone out there doesn't get it - what this kind of treatment does to people, Mukasey's vagueness be damned:

[My husband, a Vietnam vet] was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors. He suffered from his injuries for over thirties years until his fatal heart attack two years ago. All of his toenails were removed three times, to try to get rid of the bamboo infection from their attemps to extract information. Removing the toenails didn't work and he still had the infection the day he died. He had scars all over his body from wounds inflicted during questioning. There was never enough food in the house to fill the whole left by the food deprivation he suffered during his captivity. He never got a full night's sleep in over thirty. His nightmare screams still haunt my sleep. Let me be clear:

Food deprivation is torture.

Sleep deprivation is torture.

Sensory deprivation is torture.

Clothing deprivation is torture.

Stress positions are torture.

Intentionally cold environments are torture.

Intentionally hot enviroments are torture.

Beatings are torture.

Sexual humiliation and rape is torture. EVERY American needs to stand up and say:

NOT IN MY NAME!

NEVER IN MY NAME!

and they need to KEEP saying it until the torture stops. I will testify anytime and anywhere about what my husband experienced and why it is torture and what effect it had on him. Torture is ALWAYS wrong, no matter who is doing it to whom. For Dan,

Heather

Frankly, I'm humbled. I can say no more.