Attorney General nominee Mukasey on torture

I just quoted Spencer Ackerman on a different subject. But he's got a post at TPM Muckraker accompanied by the YouTube video below that is well worth noticing: Mukasey Calls Torture 'Antithetical' to American Way 10/17/07. It's about Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey's testimony to Congress on torture.



I'm very, very skeptical about any claims on the part of Cheney-Bush nominees. We've heard repeated assurances from this administration that they don't torture, only to find out later that they were redefining "torture" in a cult-like way to exclude all forms of torture that they were actually using.

I'm also struck by the fact that Mukasey specifically compared torture to the practices of the Nazis against their victims in the Holocaust. I was reminded of one of the strangest moments among many strange moments in politics in recent years: when Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin compared the torture practices at the Guantanamo gulag in 2005, he was subjected to so much criticism that he acually apologized for saying it. (I posted about that at the time in Dick Durbin's apology 06/22/05 and It's public self-criticism for heretics now 06/23/05.)

Tags: dick durbin, holocaust, michael mukasey, torture

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