PUNISH CIA AGENTS WHO PRACTICED WATERBOARDING

Judge Mukasey is apparently afraid of tipping his hand on whether waterboarding is torture. He does not want to incriminate those CIA agents and other federal agents who inflicted waterboarding and other methods of torture on suspected terrorists. (See story today by Dan Eggen in The Washington Post.)

Any CIA agents or government employees who engaged in waterboarding should be prosecuted. Republicans like to talk of "personal responsibility," and it should apply here a fortiori. Just because a CIA agent receives an instruction from a superior to subject a suspect to waterboarding is not justification for that agent to inflict this cruel harm. An agent can always quit. He or she can always refuse this unlawful order.

We all know waterboarding is a form of torture. It has a long unsavory history, dating back to at least the Inquisition where it was used on suspected heretics. It produced the results desired, namely, the "heretic," after nearly being drowned, always confessed to being allied with the devil.

As I have written in previous posts, Mukasey should volunteer to be the "suspect" in a test of waterboarding. Surely after the test, Mukasey can have a better idea of the nature of the "interrogation."

The same waterboarding should be the punishment for the CIA agents who are convicted of having inflicted it upon their captives. Surely if it is not cruel and unusual punishment and not "torture," then it would be a fitting penalty.