Dear Senator Feinstein:

I strongly urge you to vote against the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey for the position of Attorney General. Judge Mukasey has shown that he will be no better than former attorney general Alberto Gonzales in standing up to the president and enforcing the Constitution instead of the talking points of the Bush administration.

Judge Mukasey's refusal to say, during Judiciary Committee hearings, that waterboarding is definitively torture is troubling. After World War II, the United States prosecuted German and Japanese soldiers who performed simulated drowning for war crimes. Why is waterboarding any less illegal now than it was fifty years ago? Furthermore, international authorities on interrogation, as well as several former Judge Advocates General of the United States (who sent Sen. Charles Schumer a letter saying as much), all agree that waterboarding is torture. This is not, say these authorities, an issue that needs to be open to debate. Without question, waterboarding is torture. Yet, Judge Mukasey, who would be responsible for enforcing the law, is either unable or unwilling to come to that same conclusion.

Reportedly, Judge Mukasey and Sen.Schumer came to a private agreement that the former would support a bill banning certain interrogation techniques, waterboarding being one of them. This agreement strikes me as disingenuous, for even if such a bill gained the support of enough Republicans to pass, who is to say that President Bush wouldn't veto it outright? Experience has shown that President Bush insists that he does not condone the use of torture, but nevertheless wants to retain the ability to use it, ostensibly in a completely fictional "24"-style scenario in which torture is the only way to save the country from an imminent threat. This scenario, according to professional interrogators, never happens.

Beyond the issue of torture, Judge Mukasey has shown that he has the same belief as Attorney General Gonzales when it comes to presidential power. Like Gonzales, Judge Mukasey believes that the president has special wartime authority to suspend habeas corpus and engage in warrant-less wiretapping, even though these "powers" are nowhere to be found in the Constitution or federal statutes. The U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts have repeatedly struck down these over-reaching assertions of executive power, and yet, the administration continues to make them. Judge Mukasey has offered no evidence to suggest that he will respect the limitations of the executive's authority any more than Gonzales did.

President Bush has insisted, like a petulant child, that he will not nominate anyone else if Judge Mukasey is rejected by the Senate. I urge you to call the president's bluff, for if the Senate rejects Judge Mukasey, the onus is on the president to nominate someone else, and if he fails to do so, then the vacancy in the Attorney General's office is his fault and his alone for refusing to compromise. Even though he has attempted in recent weeks to suggest that Congress is ignoring the nation's business, it will be up to him to explain why he didn't want to nominate someone who would reject torture outright. If "we do not torture," as he often says, then he should be prepared to back his assertion by nominating someone who will not condone any form of torture.

I wish to thank you for your time by allowing me the opportunity to communicate with you on this issue. I hope that you will take this information to heart and reject Judge Mukasey's nomination.

Sincerely,
Mark Wilson