Why were liberal Democrats
so determined to get Attorney General Michael Mukasey to declare waterboarding
a form of torture before he was confirmed to his post? It was another
case of what Hillary likes to call “gotcha” politics. In this case,
however, Senate Democrats were trying to lay a legal trap for President
Bush. It has now backfired on them and their allies in the media.  

The Democrats, Alan Dershowitz
noted in a November 7 Wall Street Journal
article, were running
the risk of coming across as pacifists not committed to winning the
war on terrorism. And in a major foreign
policy address
on November 8, independent Democrat Senator Joseph Lieberman said that
some presidential candidates in his party have been “willing to pander”
to a “politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic
base?”  

Such sentiment is being stoked
by the likes of Keith Olbermann, the MSNBC commentator who delivered
a hysterical November 5 commentary insisting the George W. Bush presidency
is “a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.”  

It is no surprise that Rosie
O’Donnell, who was in the process of being hired by MSNBC before the
deal fell through at the last minute, called Olbermann’s program “the
best news show on TV.” O’Donnell is probably best known for expressing
the lunatic view that one of the buildings destroyed by the 9/11 terrorist
attacks was actually demolished by explosive devices planted by unknown
forces.     

Lieberman, in his remarks,
said the influence of these fringe elements can be seen in the fact
that the Democratic Party’s policy on Iraq has become “defeat and
retreat” and that, on the matter of Iranian interference in Iraq,
elected Democratic officials “seem more worried about how the Bush
administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than
about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.”  

Lieberman, who voted for Mukasey’s
confirmation, also knows that the debate over waterboarding and torture
was another effort to pander to this paranoid fringe.

The Political Plan 

The liberal game plan was simple.
If Mukasey would say that waterboarding was torture, he would have an
obligation as Attorney General to consider prosecuting Bush and other
top officials for authorizing the practice in limited circumstances
against al-Qaeda terrorists. This could lead to months of stories about
Bush’s possible impeachment during an election year.   

In addition, the “international
community” would be able to consider charging Bush and other officials
with violating a U.N. treaty against torture.   

It just so happens that the
debate over Mukasey was taking place as Martin Scheinen, a U.N. Special
Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, was visiting the United States
to officially unveil his “findings.” Invited into the U.S. by the
dysfunctional State Department, his purpose was to review U.S. counterterrorism
practices for compliance with treaty obligations, such as those in the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention
Against Torture. 

As noted by Steven Groves of
the Heritage Foundation, his “findings,” which had previously been
released, include that “the United States is not engaged in
a war on terrorism, that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay should
be closed, and that the members of al Qaeda and the Taliban detained
there should be set free.” 

At an October 31 event at the
American Society of International Law, Scheinen revealed that he began
his career as a pacifist and peace activist.  

The Hole in the Plan 

But there was one big problem
with the liberal scheme. Congress itself has never declared waterboarding
to be a form of torture. Perhaps that is because it is not. It makes
a terrorist uncomfortable and feel like drowning, but it does not subject
him to permanent physical or psychological harm. What’s more, the
technique reportedly worked in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, admitted
mastermind of 9/11, who confessed to other ongoing plots to kill Americans
that were apparently stopped.    

“I look forward to hearing
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and
others who oppose Mukasey’s nomination because of this issue explain
why the undoubted moral and diplomatic benefits of a blanket criminal
prohibition of waterboarding would outweigh the possible costs, which
might be zero but just might be thousands of lives,” declared Stuart
Taylor in the November
5 National Journal. Taylor had targeted the Democrats’ Achilles heel.
He was one of the few journalists to do so.  

What this also means is that
various commentators, especially Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams of the
Bush-bashing MSNBC cable network, were merely offering their uninformed
opinions when they declared categorically that waterboarding is a form
of torture. It is an opinion, if translated into law, that might cost
thousands of American lives. 

Olbermann went beyond just
offering his opinion. Declaring the Bush Administration a “criminal
conspiracy,” he delivered a November 5 commentary claiming that a Bush official named
Daniel Levin had declared waterboarding to be torture and that he was
fired because his views might expose Bush to prosecution for violating
the law against torture. Levin “wrote it down,” Olbermann said.
This, Olbermann insisted, could have provided the basis for Senate Democrats
to confirm Mukasey in exchange for the appointment of a special prosecutor
to investigate Bush. The impeachment drive would be on.   

It turns out that Levin had
left the Justice Department but he did not disavow waterboarding in
any official memo and believed that it could be acceptable if “performed
in a highly limited way and with close supervision.” That’s how
Jan Crawford Greenburg and Ariane de Vogue reported the story for ABC News. This is the story that
supposedly formed the basis for Olbermann’s commentary.  

It’s no wonder one prominent blogger now calls him “Dolpermann.”  

Almost as dopey as Olbermann
was Senator Ted Kennedy, whose position was captured in a Steve Kelley cartoon showing him lecturing and telling
Mukasey that “Making detainees think they’re about to drown is unacceptable!?”
The Mukasey character in the cartoon replies, “Then we should keep
them out of your car, Senator Kennedy.”  

Kennedy had left a girl to
drown in his car after they left a party and the car went off a road
and into a pond. Kennedy escaped as the girl, Mary Jo Kopechne, struggled
for her life in the bottom of the submerged car. She died as he contemplated
his political future and refused to immediately call for help. 

It was an experience much worse
than waterboarding.  

Kennedy and Water Torture  

Kennedy introduced a bill,
S. 1943, “A bill to establish uniform standards for interrogation
techniques applicable to individuals under the custody or physical control
of the United States Government.” It has only 5 co-sponsors. They
are Senators Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer, Dick Durbin,
and John F. Kerry.  

Biden, chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, introduced his own bill, the National Security
with Justice Act (S. 1876),
which among other things prohibits all United States personnel from
engaging in waterboarding. But it currently has only two co-sponsors,
Senators Thomas R. Carper and Robert Menendez.  

If the Senate Democrats believe
waterboarding is torture and that it should be illegal, why don’t
they pass the Kennedy or Biden bills? Why do they have only a few sponsors
of each?   

It’s because they knew the
entire controversy over Mukasey was manufactured in order to try to
create a political embarrassment for the Bush Administration. Their
bluff was called and seven Democrats—Senators Charles Schumer, Dianne
Feinstein, Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Tom Carper, and Joe
Lieberman—voted for Mukasey’s confirmation.  

The Democratic Senators running
for president—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Chris
Dodd—didn’t even show up for the vote. They were too busy pandering
to the Democratic base.

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About the author

Cliff Kincaid and Roger Aronoff
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org.