This Administration has brought calamity and shame on this nation in ways I never could have imagined, but the most unquestionably disgraceful act of this repulsive regime has been to permit torture to be used in our collective names. I would like to think that there is a special place in hell awaiting those who acquiesce in this, rationalize it, or attempt to explain it away -- sometimes it sucks to be a non-believer.
But Attorney General Michael Mukasey added another odious chapter to this sad tale yesterday when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States was unwilling to opine as to whether "waterboarding" or "controlled drowning," as it is more accurately described, is torture. Now I don't have nearly as distinguished a legal pedigree as Mr. Mukasey, but I think I can say with some sense of assurance that "of course it is you enormous fucking whore."
The Convention against Torture defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession." This does not strike me as a terribly difficult definition to apply to a practice such as waterboarding. If you think it is, then ask yourself the question would you think it torture if a foreign government or group did this to an American serviceman or civilian?
Mukasey, however, had the balls to state that this "is an issue on which people of equal intelligence and equal good faith" can differ. No, it's not. It fucking well is not.
Conservatives used to like to natter on about "defining deviancy down," a practice that would shake the very foundation of the Republic if say, for instance, gay people could respectably hold themselves out as such without shame.
Well now it seems that "people of good faith" can condone or order the torture of others in our name. In so suggesting, the Attorney General has taken us far past the point of defining deviancy down -- he has obliterated any moral authority the United States ever had to invoke the rule of law or respect for human rights in any meaningful way.
The Senate should call for his resignation.
As for the rest of the administration, I've got two words -- "Hague, bitches."
