Bush's 'Firsthand' Experience With War

The New AG

Dan Eggen and Paul Kane write in The Washington Post: "A divided Senate narrowly confirmed former federal judge Michael B. Mukasey last night as the 81st attorney general, giving the nominee the lowest level of congressional support of any Justice Department leader in the past half-century.

"The 53 to 40 vote came after more than four hours of impassioned floor debate, and it reflected an effort by Democrats to register their displeasure with Bush administration policies on torture and the boundaries of presidential power. . . .

"Mukasey, 66, had outraged many lawmakers and human rights groups by repeatedly refusing to classify waterboarding, a simulated-drowning technique, as torture. His few Democratic supporters said last night that, although they are troubled by his equivocal views on waterboarding, they believe Mukasey represents the best possibility for change at the troubled Justice Department. 'This is the only chance we have,' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)."

Richard B. Schmitt writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The margin of confirmation -- narrower than that for either Gonzales or John Ashcroft, Bush's first attorney general -- was hardly the vote of confidence that the White House or even Senate Democrats expected when Bush tapped Mukasey in mid-September to succeed Gonzales."

As for Waterboarding

Josh White writes in The Washington Post: "A former Navy survival instructor subjected to waterboarding as part of his military training told Congress yesterday that the controversial tactic should plainly be considered torture and that such a method was never intended for use by U.S. interrogators because it is a relic of abusive totalitarian governments.

"Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a counterterrorism specialist who taught at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in California, likened waterboarding to drowning and said those who experience it will say or do anything to make it stop, rendering the information they give nearly useless. . . .

"Unlike attorney general nominee Michael B. Mukasey, who called the technique repugnant but declined to say whether it is torture, Nance said unequivocally that waterboarding is a long-standing form of torture used by history's most brutal governments, including those of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, North Korea, Iraq, the Soviet Union and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia."

Congress: Now One for Five

Bush has only issued five vetoes during his seven-year presidency. Yesterday, Congress overrode one of them.

David M. Hersenzohn writes in the New York Times: "The Senate dealt President Bush the first veto override of his presidency on Thursday, with a resounding bipartisan vote to adopt a $23.2 billion water resources bill that authorizes popular projects across the country.

"The vote of 79 to 14 sent a clear signal that the Democrats in control of Congress plan to test the power of the White House on other fronts, and it gave Republicans a chance to show distance from an unpopular president heading into a tough election year.

"'We have said today, as a Congress to this president, you can't just keep rolling over us like this,' said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who led the charge on the water bill as chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. . . .

"Thirty-four of the Senate's 49 Republicans voted to override."