Torturing the definition of torture: Michael Mukasey has been affirmed as the new attorney general of the United States, though his testimony made clear that he won't likely adhere to the Constitution.(EXECUTIVE BRANCH)(Viewpoint essay)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

By confirming Michael Mukasey as attorney general on November 9, the U.S. Senate demonstrated to the world that it is willing to tolerate the reported use of torture by the CIA against terrorist suspects. The Senate also demonstrated its willingness to allow the president to use his presumed authority as commander-in-chief to trample on laws passed by Congress.

What else can be concluded after Mukasey's dodging and disturbing testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prior to his nomination being approved by the committee and then the full Senate? Mukasey, a retired federal judge, was repeatedly asked during his confirmation hearings if waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques reportedly practiced by the CIA against terrorism suspects constituted torture. He repeatedly refused to answer the question, though he did at least acknowledge that torture was unconstitutional. He later sent a letter to Democratic members of the committee calling waterboarding "repugnant" but adding that he could not judge its legality until given access to classified information about interrogation techniques.

Incredible! One does not need access to classified information to know that waterboarding is torture. Former U.S. Navy instructor Malcolm Nance, who trained U.S. forces to resist harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding, wrote on the Small Wars Journal blog that waterboarding is torture "without doubt." Though waterboarding is often described by the media as simulated drowning, Nance points out that it is "not a simulation" at all but a "controlled drowning." In waterboarding, Nance explains, "the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral."

Nance continues: "Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration--usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death."

Syndicated columnist Joseph Galloway, coauthor of We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young, recently described a waterboarding he had witnessed as a young reporter covering the Vietnam War. (His character is depicted in the movie We Were Soldiers.) According to Galloway: "When you hog-tie a human being, tilt him head down, stuff a rag in his mouth and over his nostrils and pour water onto the rag slowly and steadily to the point where his lungs start to fill with water and he's suffocating and drowning, that is torture."

The waterboarding witnessed by Galloway was performed by South Vietnamese Army troops against a Viet Cong suspect. "The victim was taken to the edge of death," Galloway recalled. "His body was wracked with spasms as he fought for air. The soldier holding the five-gallon kerosene tin filled with muddy water from a nearby stream kept pouring it slowly onto the rag, and the victim desperately sucking for even a little air kept inhaling that water instead."