Bush Attorney General Nominee Gets Boost
WASHINGTON ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ Michael Mukasey drew closer to becoming attorney general Friday after two key Senate Democrats said they would vote for him despite his refusal to say whether waterboarding is torture. The decision by Sens. Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein to back President Bush’s nominee came shortly after the chairman of the committee, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced he would vote against Mukasey, a former federal judge.
That sound you didn’t hear was the sound of Democrats doing the right thing. How difficult is it to demand an unequivocal promise that America does not torture, will not torture, and will not tolerate those who torture in our name? If a nominee for Attorney General cannot make this promise, then he or she has NO BUSINESS serving as the top law enforcement official in the land. When asked to simply and unequivocably state that waterboarding is torture (and how else could it reasonably be defined?), Michael Mukasey hemmed, hawed, equivocated, and parsed his answer in legalisms and meaningless verbal vomit.
If you consider the (not inconsiderable) available anecdotal evidence, it’s pretty clear that America tortures. For a country that has always prided itself on being a shining beacon of freedom to the rest of the world, this is a very damning truth. We may think of ourselves as a Shining City on a Hill, but the reality is that we’re really no different and no better than your average Third World dictatorship.
The truly sad aspect of this debate is that Democrats- the majority party in Congress- have the power and the ability to ensure that America does not tolerate torture. Unfortunately, when it comes to anything related to Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s © never-ending War on Terror, their natural reaction is to (metaphorically) drop trou and grab their ankles. Instead of standing on principle and demanding that Michael Mukasey define waterboarding as torture (which it is), Senate Democrats haven’t had the balls to do the right thing. Are they really so terrified of being accused of being “soft on terrorists” that they’re willing check their moral courage at the door?
Apparently so. And we’re all poorer for it.
I’d like to pin this on our The Worst President EVER © and his neoConservative Dominionist thugs, but the reality is that this one rests squarely on the shoulder of Senate Democrats. They have the power to force Mukasey to do the right thing and renounce the use of torture. Instead, they’ve chose to drop trou and grab their ankles like the moral midgets they are.
Nice display of courage, eh?? This is the sort of thing that makes me ashamed to have to call myself a Democrat, because I belong to a party with no balls and no courage. Then again, I suppose this would explain why we ran the Tin Man for President in 2004, eh?
