Tortured America

From David Kurtz at TPM:

This may be the most revealing bit of Michael Mukasey's testimony today: Whether waterboarding is torture, the attorney general says, requires a balancing test of the costs v. the benefits.

So there you have it. In the view of the Justice Department, there is no categorical prohibition against the torture of detainees, even under the Detainee Treatment Act.

Waterboarding has become proxy for a whole host of torture methods that traditionally would be considered torture, and so the balancing test set out by the attorney general is not limited to waterboarding.

This is not America as it should be. My government continues to bring me shame.

30 January 2008

Edit: Further information on the hearing can be found here.
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