Government Sanctioned Torturers

Maybe it's unfair of me, but based on the Michael "I don't know if waterboarding is torture" Mukasey vote I hope that the Democrats lose control of the Senate, for at least one election cycle. And that Mary Landrieu of Louisiana — the only one of the six renegade Democrats voting for Mukasey who's up in 2008 — definitely loses. Odds are probably close to zero on either score, but you never know. Now that Mukasey is in, however, he should be called up to testify about waterboarding. And what I want to know is: Does the U.S. government waterboard American citizens? It's not a frivolous question, because we know (from the earlier EP guest Joe Margulies) that the U.S. is holding American citizens in Iraq. Out of reach, or so their captors think, of the American legal system (and for all we know there could be other Americans held at black sites, perhaps on our behalf by foreign governments). And we know from the top State Department lawyer, John Bellinger, participating in a recent debate in the UK, that the U.S. would not automatically object to other countries waterboarding American citizens. Put two and two together, it's a question, perhaps even a question that involves violations of U.S. criminal statutes. But at this point I very much doubt whether any Democratic Senator has the intestinal fortitude to ask...