Jim Hightower

Let’s all give a big shout-out to two Democrats in the U.S. Senate who made Michael Mukasey the attorney general of our country. Thanks, Chuck Schumer and Diane Fienstein – thanks for nothing.

After Mukasey was nominated last year by George W to be America’s top legal officer, all hell broke loose at his confirmation hearing when he refused to categotize waterboarding as “torture.” Unpleasant, yes; torture – well, maybe not.

Let’s clarify what this despicable interrogation tactic involves. Waterboarding usually is described by the media as strapping a person face-up on a board, tilting that board to lower the person’s head, putting a towel over the head, and pouring water over it in a way that “simulates” drowning. That’s too gentle. The towel isn’t merely soaked – water flood’s into the nostrils and mouth as the suffocating victim gasps for breath, and water enters the lungs. The person is drowning. Before dying, though, the head is tilted back up and the victim is revived. Then the interrogators tilt the head back down to drown the person again.

Our own military says this is torture, and the practice is considered an international war crime. But Bush’s CIA uses waterboarding and wants to keep doing it. So, when outraged Democrats threatened to kill Mukasey’s nomination over this issue, he met privately with Senators Schumer and Fienstein and gave them off-the-record assurances that he could be trusted to do the right thing and stop waterboarding. Thus, gullible as two rubes at a medicine show, Schumer and Feinstein gave Mukasey the votes he needed to win confirmation.

Last month, however, Mukasey reappeared before the same senate panel and declared that waterboardig is not necessarily torture or illegal, and that the CIA can continue using it.

Shame on him, but shame on Schumer and Fienstein, too. They failed us.