Senator Patrick Leahy stated that he will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General over the waterboarding issue. While Mr. Mukasey has indicated that our current laws prohibit waterboarding, he declined to conclude that waterboarding constituted torture. The problem in this case resides with the question and not with Mr. Mukasey’s answer. Specifically, Senator Leahy should have asked Mr. Mukasey whether he would have considered the simulated drowning of an American service member while in captivity by the Iranian military to be a war crime. If he opined that such an act was merely morally repugnant, then we know we have the wrong candidate.
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