Unlike Gonzales, Mukasey doesn't think Bush has right to torture

RAW STORY

Opening Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey's Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Chairman accused the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft of allowing the torture of terror detainees, and the nominee quickly disavowed the practice.

"The attorney general cannot interpret our laws to mean whatever the current administration, Republican or Democratic, wants them to mean," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Wednesday. He charged that the Bush administration Justice Department "doubled back to redefine torture, to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to allow the very conduct of torture that this congress had outlawed."

Mukasey said that he had not been "read into" classified Justice Department documents regarding the use of cruel or degrading treatment by CIA interrogators, but he said he would not condone torture.

Leahy asked specifically about the "Bybee memo," which defined broad limits on interrogation tactics, allowing physical pain to be inflicted up to the point that would cause "organ failure" or "death." The memo from then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee was later overridden by an executive order.

The nominee disavowed the memo and said he believed it was contrary to the law and values of America, but he declined to discuss specific steps he would take because he was unaware of the specifics of classified policies he had yet to be briefed on. His stance that President Bush does not have the right to torture detainees is one not taken by his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales..........