Academic

Stop the Presses - Impeachment Cannot Be ?Off the Table?

By Sherrilyn Ifill

I know that the public, the press and the pundits (myself included) are caught up in excitement over the presidential primaries.  I?ve got Obama fever and like many, I?ve been monitoring each candidate?s statements and announcements daily.  But our focus on the primaries has pulled our attention away from a matter than demands our most careful attention:  the impeachment of George W. Bush.   If you had any doubt that this remains a task of the utmost importance, then return your attention to the question of CIA torture and waterboarding.  Yesterday, while most of the press was focused on calling the outcomes of Super Tuesday, Bush authorized CIA chief Michael Hayden to admit for the first time before Congress that the U.S. has used waterboarding on detainees.  Remember, prior to yesterday, Bush?s line was always, ?I won?t admit to using any particular interrogation technique, because then the enemy will be able to adjust their tactics.?  Like detainees are gonna learn how to breathe through their feet to avoid being half-drowned by waterboarding!                

                Today, new Attorney General Michael Mukasey testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department can?t investigate whether the CIA violated the law by engaging in waterboarding, because the Justice Department (under the hapless Attorney General Gonzales) had already determined that waterboarding was legal (Convention Against Torture, and Geneva Conventions nothwithstanding). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020701542.html?hpid=topnews.  Says, Mukasey, ?that  would mean the same department that authorized the program would be involved in prosecuting people for taking part in it.?  Good point.   That?s why the Judiciary Committee tried to clear up at his confirmation hearings whether in his view waterboarding is torture.  They wanted to know if he?d have the independence to prosecute despite the tortured legal interpretations of his predecessor.  Mukasey?s answer then was, ? I don?t know if waterboarding is torture.  First I have to review what the practices have been.?  In other words, give me the job first, and then I?ll tell you (a deal that a six-year old could see through, but that Sens. Schumer and Feinstein fell for and thus guaranteed his confirmation).

Mukasey?s testimony today is even different than what he told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.   Then he said that although he had authorized an investigation into whether the CIA illegally destroyed tapes of interrogations using waterboarding, he couldn?t authorize an investigation into whether waterboarding itself was illegally used because he didn?t have probable cause to believe that illegal waterboarding had taken place.  Huh?  I started to get confused too.  Then Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, with the patience of Job, made Mukasey explain his logic step-by-step.  What became clear at the end of the exchange was that Mukasey was blowing smoke up the collective ass of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&ArchiveDays=100&Page=13    Sen. Whitehouse later described himself as ?frustrated? by Mukasey?s testimony.  http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&ArchiveDays=100&Page=12

I was more than frustrated.  I was creeped out.  It was off-putting enough that Mukasey?s voice sounds eerily like that of Rudy Guiliani.  But Mukasey?s obfuscation, deliberate evasions and belligerence in response to questions about torture and his failure to order an investigation into the illegal use of waterboarding were simply spectacular.  We traded in Gonzales for this?

                So now where are we?  If the Department can?t investigate a practice it authorized, isn?t that that perfect set up for a special prosecutor?  Who knows?  The House and Senate Judiciary Committees are beginning to look like fools, asking the same questions over and over again of a witness who provides ever more incredible and shameful testimony with seeming impunity.  What are the congressional committees prepared to do with all this testimony they?ve compiled?  The answer should be:  file and vote on articles of impeachment of the President and probably the Vice-President as well.  As I?ve said before, waiting for a new President next year is not the answer.  The very legitimacy of the rule of law and the Constitution are at stake.   I?m reminded of a quote by someone whose views I otherwise disagree with on many topics, that perfectly describes why impeachment is so important.  Writing about President Clinton?s initial refusal to intervene militarily in the Balkans after the massacre at Srebrenica in her book A Problem from Hell, author Samantha Power quotes the New Republic?s Leon Wieseltier, who said of Clinton ?the president of the United States does not have the right to make the people of [this country] seem as indecent as he is.  He has the power, but he does not have the right.? 

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Full post as published by BlackProf on February 09, 2008 (boomark / email).