Mukasey was a shoe in.  He had allayed everyone’s fears of his stance on torture.  It’s illegal, he said!  He was almost guaranteed a speedy approval by the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Then comes the waterboarding debacle.  After being asked to clarify his stance on waterboarding as a torture method, Mukasey was not able to give a clear response.  Mukasey “does not have enough information to determine if it is illegal.”  His ambiguous statements have seriously jeopardized his appointment.

Clearly, Mukasey’s unwillingness to specify a stance on waterboarding throws his whole stance on torture into question.  He is willing to prosecute all who enable the painful and dehumanizing methods, as long there is a very narrow definition of what actually is painful and dehumanizing.  His initial declaration of willingness to protect human rights and decency was a facade. Should Mukasey be allowed to become our next Attorney General, we would be vindicating Alberto Gonzales and all who condone and promote torture as a national defense tool. Mukasey has shown to be evasive in his responses, just as Gonzales was in his responses to the panel. I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like being played, and those are two things Mukasey has already shown to be capable of.

It is disappointing that torture has come about as a new litmus test for politicians and bureacrats alike.   It’s something I took for granted.   No one that has such contempt for human dignity should be promoted to direct our country.