The Tipping Point

The Mukasey waterboard controversy has turned now to a full fledged tsunami-- his nomination is now in question. Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats asked in a letter to Mukasey a simple question: "is waterboarding torture?" In a four-page response, he deflected again. Mukasey wrote that he could not answer because it may put interrogators previously authorized or currently using coercive techniques in "legal jeopardy" and would "provide our enemies with a window into the limits or contours of any interrogation program we may have in place". He even repeated his claim that he doesn't even know what the method entails, given he "has not been made aware of the details of any interrogation program". The transformation is complete: Mukasey has now fully working "the dark side".
To their credit, leading Democrats are now dropping support of Mukasey one by one. By why is this still a partisan issue? This is an issue about who we are-- about the core character of America.
Former SERE trainer Malcolm W. Nance has just penned what I believe to be the most informed, insightful, and empasioned account of the waterboarding controversy to date. He writes:

Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations. Forget threats, poor food, the occasional face slap and sexual assaults. This was not a dignified ‘taking off the gloves’; this was descending to the level of our opposition in an equally brutish and ugly way. Waterboarding will be one our future enemy’s go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.

There may never again be a chance that Americans will benefit from the shield of outrage and public opinion when our future enemy uses of torture. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of American citizens, agents and members of the armed forces may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora’s box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name of protecting America. To defeat Bin Laden many in this administration have openly embraced the methods of by Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein.

Read the whole piece, and read it again. We are now at the tipping point. Which path will we choose to take?