Mukasey mum on torture techniques

The entire article is at Yahoo. So here is a guy that doesn't know whether waterboarding is torture! Even retired Navy lawyers know it is torture:
Other than perhaps the rack and thumbscrews, waterboarding is the most iconic example of torture in history," said retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, a former Navy lawyer and dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H. "It has been repudiated for centuries. It's a little bit disconcerting to hear now that we're not quite sure where waterboarding fits in the scheme of things."
Mukasey actually may make a good substitute for Gonazales in Bush's scheme of things.

Mukasey mum on torture techniques By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer


Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey refused to say Thursday whether he considers waterboarding a form of torture, frustrating Democrats and potentially slowing his confirmation to head the Justice Department.

In an increasingly testy second day of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mukasey also said he is reluctant to support legislation protecting reporters from being forced by courts to reveal their sources. The Democratic-led panel has approved those protections, which President Bush has threatened to veto.

Mukasey, a retired federal judge who has ruled in some of the nation's highest-profile terror trials, repeatedly avoided discussing the legality of specific interrogation techniques — including forced nudity, mock executions and simulated drowning known as waterboarding.

To comment would be irresponsible "when there are people who are using coercive techniques and who are being authorized to use coercive techniques," Mukasey said.

"And for me to say something that is going to put their careers or freedom at risk simply because I want to be congenial — I don't think it would be responsible of me to do that," Mukasey said.

Instead, Mukasey stuck to his earlier definition of torture