Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

November 6, 2007

During his Senate confirmation hearings, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey was asked about the legal status of ?waterboarding? -- an interrogation technique best described as controlled, non-lethal drowning. Although he described the practice as ?repugnant,? Mukasey pointedly refused to say that it is illegal, owing to the fact that the Bush administration has made use of it in interrogating terrorist suspects.

The Bush administration employs a circular argument to defend its use of the practice: Since torture is illegal, and the administration approves of waterboarding, that method can't be considered torture ? or so the administration would have us believe.

Men who have been entrusted to uphold the honor of our military see the matter differently. In a November 2 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the former Judge Advocate Generals of all four branches of the service wrote: ?Waterboarding detainees amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances.
To suggest otherwise ... represents both an affront to the law and to the core values of our nation.?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.