" ... US Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Wednesday to define waterboarding as illegal torture, even while admitting that if he underwent the interrogation technique that he would "feel" it is torture.
Fending off pressure in a Senate Justice Committee hearing to categorically call waterboarding, which simulates drowning, as torture under US law, the top US legal official suggested that under certain conditions it could be legal, and said that learned people could disagree on the issue.
"I don't think it would be appropriate for me to pass definitive judgement on the technique's legality," he said.
"There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit waterboarding's use. Other circumstances would present a far closer question."
In his first testimony to the committee since becoming attorney general on November 9, Mukasey said that torture is illegal under US statutes, but that waterboarding is not definitively covered by those statutes.
"There is a statute which says it is a relative issue," Mukasey said to questioning by Senator Joe Biden.
He also said that the Central Intelligence Agency does not now use waterboarding and that the technique is "currently" not approved for its interrogation program.
However, he declined to say whether it had been used in the past.
"I am not authorized to talk about what the CIA has done in the past," he told the Senate panel.
Senators were adamant that it is torture, with committee head Patrick Leahy insisting that waterboarding "has been recognized as torture for the last 500 years."
Fending off pressure in a Senate Justice Committee hearing to categorically call waterboarding, which simulates drowning, as torture under US law, the top US legal official suggested that under certain conditions it could be legal, and said that learned people could disagree on the issue.
"I don't think it would be appropriate for me to pass definitive judgement on the technique's legality," he said.
"There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit waterboarding's use. Other circumstances would present a far closer question."
In his first testimony to the committee since becoming attorney general on November 9, Mukasey said that torture is illegal under US statutes, but that waterboarding is not definitively covered by those statutes.
"There is a statute which says it is a relative issue," Mukasey said to questioning by Senator Joe Biden.
He also said that the Central Intelligence Agency does not now use waterboarding and that the technique is "currently" not approved for its interrogation program.
However, he declined to say whether it had been used in the past.
"I am not authorized to talk about what the CIA has done in the past," he told the Senate panel.
Senators were adamant that it is torture, with committee head Patrick Leahy insisting that waterboarding "has been recognized as torture for the last 500 years."
[ ... ]
The issue was central to the committee's hearings late last year on Mukasey's nomination to head the Justice Department.
At the time he declined to answer questions on it, saying he had not been briefed on CIA practices or the Bush administration's legal reasonings.
Mukasey did offer that weighing whether waterboarding is torture or not invokes the issue of whether it "shocks the conscience."
That standard "is essentially a balancing test of the value of doing something as against the cost of doing it."
Under the "shocks-the-conscience" standard, he said, it would be torture if done in an interrogation simply to gain information for "historical circumstances" but not to save lives. ... "
The issue was central to the committee's hearings late last year on Mukasey's nomination to head the Justice Department.
At the time he declined to answer questions on it, saying he had not been briefed on CIA practices or the Bush administration's legal reasonings.
Mukasey did offer that weighing whether waterboarding is torture or not invokes the issue of whether it "shocks the conscience."
That standard "is essentially a balancing test of the value of doing something as against the cost of doing it."
Under the "shocks-the-conscience" standard, he said, it would be torture if done in an interrogation simply to gain information for "historical circumstances" but not to save lives. ... "
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