US attorney general candidate rejects torture, vows independence

Michael Mukasey, President George Bush's choice to replace Alberto Gonzalez, whose office was criticized for its support of what the CIA has called "enhanced interrogation" techniques and opponents called torture, appeared to repudiate the use of such measures at the start of his confirmation hearings at which he also promised independence from the White House.

The apparent relaxing of US standards governing the treatment of prisoners since Sept. 11 has damaged America's standing around the world, and the issue is being closely watched abroad.

While Democrats in Congress expressed disappointment at some of Mr. Mukasey's answers, The New York Times reports that he did a good enough job to virtually guarantee his confirmation.

Democratic senators welcomed Mr. Mukasey's promise that he would impose new rules to limit contacts between political figures and the Justice Department. He also said ... the department's hiring [should] be done "on the basis of competence and ability and dedication and not based on whether somebody's got an 'R' or a 'D' next to their names."

Those remarks were clearly meant to distance Mr. Mukasey from the political scandals that engulfed the department during the tenure of Mr. Gonzales, who dismissed several United States attorneys around the country last year for what appeared to be political reasons.

Mr. Mukasey also pleased the Democrats who control the Judiciary Committee by saying that he considered torture of terrorist suspects to be illegal under American and international law and that the president did not have the authority to order it under any circumstances.

The Chicago Tribune says Mukasey "explicitly disavowed" the relaxation of standards regarding interrogation and detainees under Mr. Gonzalez.

He also quickly distanced himself from Gonzales by explicitly disavowing two Justice Department memos that authorized use of abusive tactics to interrogate suspected terrorists. Mukasey said that policy "was worse than a sin. It was a mistake."

Mukasey noted that the United States is bound by its own laws and treaty obligations to prohibit torture, but he went further, saying, "We don't torture, not simply because it's against this or that law or this or that treaty. Soldiers of this country liberated concentration camps and photographed what they saw there as a record of the barbarism they opposed."

Though Mukasey did not ever say so, some commentators believe he is signaling a new direction for the government.

Andrew Sullivan, a conservative columnist and blogger for the Atlantic Monthly, who has strongly opposed abusive interrogation methods, is hopeful about Mukasey, comparing his comments, particularly his remark that the US didn't record what went on in concentration camps so we could "duplicate what we opposed," to the position on the issue by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin.

"Duplicate what we opposed"? Nazi concentration camps? Does that remind you of anyone?

"In a Senate floor speech Tuesday, [Senator Dick] Durbin cited an FBI report describing Guantanamo Bay prisoners chained to the floor in the fetal position without food or water and sometimes in extreme temperatures.

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