What Torture?

We don't torture. Because torture is illegal.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has performed the central task for which he was chosen by the President and leading congressional leaders — he is refusing to allow a criminal investigation into water-boarding.

[...]

Mukasey’s reasoning is bizarre: because Bush lawyers said it was okay, it was. The moment of truth came under questioning from House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers who asked Mukasey whether he was starting a criminal investigation since CIA director Michael Hayden and other have confirmed the use of waterboarding: “No, I am not, for this reason: Whatever was done as part of a CIA program at the time that it was done was the subject of a Department of Justice opinion through the Office of Legal Counsel and was found to be permissible under the law as it existed then.”

  Jonathan Turley

In which case, Mike, why not try the attorneys who came up with that opinion? Hm?

So here is how the law works for General Mukasey. Bush appoints extremists who believe that he can order acts defined as war crimes by U.S. and international courts. They then say torture is permissible. When the crimes are revealed, the Attorney General says that since lawyers said it was legal, it was not criminal. That would mean that any crime could be magically transformed into a non-crime by simply hiring clueless counsel.

Or complicit counsel. I’m pretty sure that’s what His Slowliness the Dope has been saying all along.

There is no debate over waterboarding outside of this Administration. U.S. courts and international courts have long defined waterboarding to be torture — and a war crime.

[...]

Of course, the fix was in some time ago with Democrats who repeatedly acted to prevent any serious investigation or confrontation on the issue — due in no small part to the disclosure of their own knowledge of the torture program.

The Right and Left wings of the Corporate War Party.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.