The AG & Torture: Same As It Ever Was

It is now beyond obvious that Michael Mukasey blew beaucoup smoke up the collective asses of the senators who grilled him regarding the Bush administration’s embrace of torture during his confirmation hearings to replace Alberto Gonzalez as attorney general.

Beyond being wishy-washy on the use of waterboarding, Mukasey promised that he would review the legality of the administration's reprehensible approval of Nazi-like torture techniques, which Senator Charles Schumer and his posse of Craven Cavers bought into lock, stock and barrel.

The fig leaf that The Chuckster and his ilk used is in retrospect laughable: They would vote to approve Mukasey's nomination because Gonzo had left the Justice Department a mess and it needs strong leadership.

Well, it turns out that Mukasey is a White House ass kisser of the first water.

Not only has the former judge not conducted that review of torture policies in the two-plus months since he was sworn in, but he has now dropped any pretence of being cut from different cloth than his predecessor as he told the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week that:

When evaluating the legality of an interrogation technique, the government had to weigh "the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it balanced against the value . . . of what information you might get."

As for waterboarding, he agreed that its use would "shock the conscience" and be impermissible if it were used to extract information "that wouldn't save lives." But it could pass legal muster if used to prevent imminent harm.

As I wrote here, Congress will need to provoke a constitutional showdown if the torture boil is finally going to be lanced.

This is because the federal judiciary is DOA on the issue and Mukasey has amply shown his hand in his remarks this week and earlier refusal to appoint an independent prosecutor the investigate the destruction of those CIA torture tapes with broad powers like Patrick Fitzgerald in the Wilson-Plame leak investigation. This although the destruction of the tapes makes the destruction of a CIA agent's career seem almost quaint by comparison.

The Bush presidency has been one big constitutional crisis, so if it takes a constitutional showdown to make sure that the investigation is on the right track, so be it.

Which leaves it up to Congress to insist that politics will not yet again trump the rule of law. That means that Jose Rodriguez, the former spook at the center of the tapes destruction, must testify without immunity and Schumer and the Craven Cavers must find their voices.

* * * * *

It is amazing that The Washington Post, a newspaper with an experienced and sophisticated editorial board is only just now waking up to Mukaseys duplicity.

In an editorial that is months late and many dollars short, The Post harrumphed this week that Mukasey is disappointing and Congress needs to intervene in the torture scandal.

Now why didn’t I think of that?