Michael Mukasey – unfit to be Attorney General

Let’s be clear about what water boarding is. You take a human being and strap them to a board. You then either dunk their head in water repeatedly or you pour vast amounts of water directly into their face. Or, if you use the method favored by the Inquisition at one point, you pour water onto rags you’ve stuffed into their mouths and down their throat. Helpless, the victim chokes, gags and panics. That fundamental, hard-wired, biological terror that accompanies the sense that you can’t take a breath kicks in.  This is done not once, but over and over as the victim becomes increasingly weak.

Survivors have reported that water filled their mouth, throat and lungs. The pressure, according to one survivor, was so great that he thought his eardrums would burst.  While being subjected to this treatment, people pass out. Repeatedly. They are revived only to have to endure the treatment again. They don’t just come to believe they are going to drown. They do begin to drown.

In fact, the sense of drowning is so strong that an excellent case could be made that water boarding is a kind of particularly cruel mock-execution in which the victim not only suffers the psychological fear of death, but experiences much of the physical pain as well.

For a man who wishes to be the chief law enforcement officer of this nation to refuse to state without equivocation that such treatment is torture is unacceptable. For the Justice Department to be lead by someone whose sense of justice is so perverted by political considerations that he cannot testify under oath that water boarding is a violation not only of international and federal law, but also of basic human decency is obscene.

Please. Right now. Call your Senators and tell them to refuse to confirm Mukasey.

The betray us report

Here is the problem. Well, one of the problems.

Military leaders don’t like to lose. If you show them an enemy, they will seek to use the tools they have to defeat that enemy. It’s what they do. They will invade. They will project force. They will use guns and bombs. They will endorse a surge. They will argue for more time. No military leader wants to say, “we can’t win.”

And yet, the situation in Iraq isn’t one that our military can win. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying they aren’t the best in the world. In so far as I know, they are. I’m not saying the troops aren’t willing. They seem to be throwing themselves in harm’s way with a heroism that is truly heartrending.

What I am saying is that the problem in Iraq isn’t a military problem. We’re using the wrong tool to try to solve the puzzle and all that is happening as a result is a lot of death.

The issue in Iraq is that Saddam, however cruel a despot he might have been, held together disparate forces that now have turned against one another. And don’t think this is all about religion either. There is plenty of political and/or “resource” based violence going on. The military, no matter how many we send over there, cannot force unreasonable people to come to a reasonable and peaceful compromise that will allow them to live together.

Especially not when they seem to be enjoying the fight.

So, Gen. Petraeus has a problem. He’s faced with having to use our Armed Forces to try to effect a win on a battlefield that is, largely, irrelevant to victory.

On top of that, Gen. Petraeus has been betrayed by his Commander in Chief who has elected to hide behind his military leaders rather than deal himself with the political consequences of an unjustified and unpopular war. A good commander knows that you can’t lead while using your troops as human shields. But Bush is doing exactly that. And, it appears, that to add insult to injury, he is also scripting what his human shield will say.

All of this means that the Republican mantra of “wait until September to see if the surge is working” will soon be “wait until the end of Bush’s term to see if the surge ‘continues’ to improve the situation.”

And then, of course, the whole problem (and the ensuing mess) will be dropped into Bush’s successor’s lap.

Mr. President, have you at long last no shame?

It’s bedtime for Gonzo.

This past Sunday, I watched in mild amazement as the pundits on various shows tried to parse the issue of perjury. It seems that the Supreme Court has ruled that truth is an absolute defense against charges of perjury, even in cases where the truth was stated in a manner calculated to be misleading. This has caused people to wonder if Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General of the United States, has been cleverly parsing his words so as to be entirely misleading while also technically truthful.

Frankly, I doubt he’s that clever. But in the end, the question of his technical truthfulness is a matter of concern only in any eventual criminal proceeding. When it comes to the matter of impeachment, I think we can safely say that having a civil officer of the United States give so much thought and effort to misleading Congress should at least be considered a grave breech of his oath of office. After all, he swore to uphold and defend the Constitution and by attempting to circumvent the oversight role of Congress in such a venal fashion he has surely failed in that most basic duty.

This administration has shown nothing but contempt for any action of Congress that doesn’t exactly conform to the demands of Bush & Co. Perhaps they believe that in this post-9/11 world, we can’t afford to be a democracy anymore. Unfortunately for them, the founders didn’t provide for a means for the Constitution to be suspended. Nor did the founders provide for the conversion of a presidency into a dictatorship – even in a national emergency.

Please, contact your federal Representative and tell him or her that Congress must act to preserve its institutional integrity. We cannot have a justice department lead by a man who believes that it is acceptable to either lie or mislead when under oath. We cannot have a chief law enforcement officer who so publicly flouts the law. We cannot continue to have Alberto Gonzales. Impeachment is the right solution for what has become a national embarrassment.

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