Watching yesterday's testimony from AG Michael Mukasey was an evil form of verbal water torture. I'm used to watching people on the stand parse their words so closely that a split hair seems substantial, but that was just painful.

From emptywheel's liveblogging:

Whitehouse: Process question. In terms of advisory responsibilities, not going to investigate. You've disclosed waterboarding not part of CIA interrogation regime. Still leaves open torture statute whether there are concrete facts or circumstances, given that that evaporates, whatever it is it is. I'm trying to determine if that is taking place (the analysis), if you're waiting for Durham's investigation to look more into what happened. Or if there has been a policy determination made, that bc there has been a claim of authority, there will be no investigation. What is the process for coming to this decision.

MM: Facts come to the attention to the Department that warrant investigation.

Could there be a more nonchalant, nonresponse to a very pointed question on an issue of such ethical import and legal consequence? (If you missed the hearings, The Muck has a series of clips of testimony.) Marty Lederman and Jack Balkin parse various bits of testimony into what Mukasey is really saying. Very Queen of Hearts, if you ask me: "Sentence first, verdict after." Glenn is disgusted, as is Digby, as am I. Yglesias links to some good background information. And Scott Horton has this to say:

...Elihu Root, a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt’s and one of the titans of the New York Bar, put it bluntly and in terms that could not be better suited to the current predicament. “About half of the practice of a decent lawyer is telling would-be clients that they are damn fools and should stop.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee put Michael Mukasey to the test yesterday. And he left the hearing room as an embarrassment to those who have known and worked with him over the last twenty years, and who mistakenly touted his independence and commitment to do the right thing, come what may. On the other hand, Vice President Cheney, the principal author of the torture system, must be elated and relieved. Indeed, Cheney’s lawyer Shannen Coffin rushed to National Review Online to give Mukasey’s performance an enthusiastic seal of approval. Mukasey flunked the simple test that Elihu Root posed for all lawyers: he doesn’t have the gumption to tell the president that his torture program is unlawful and needs to be shutdown. Moreover, he’s fully bought in to the cover-up....

Beyond the sickening fact that all of this is occurring in all of our names, and has been for years now, and that the rule of law and principles of morality long-held as the cornerstones of human rights policy are mere inconveniences to be ignored entirely, we are now in the unenviable position of being laughable hypocrites in a very public, government-sanctioned way in terms of forcing real change in other parts of the world where it is desperately needed. See, for example, this latest from China:

When state security agents burst into his apartment on Dec. 27, Hu Jia was chatting on Skype, the Internet-based telephone system. Mr. Hu’s computer was his most potent tool. He disseminated information about human rights cases, peasant protests and other politically touchy topics even though he often lived under de facto house arrest.

Mr. Hu, 34, and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, are human rights advocates who spent much of 2006 restricted to their apartment in a complex with the unlikely name of Bo Bo Freedom City. She blogged about life under detention, while he videotaped a documentary titled “Prisoner in Freedom City.” Their surreal existence seemed to reflect an official uncertainty about how, and whether, to shut them up.

Mr. Hu is currently in prison, and his wife and their 2-month-old child are political prisoners under house arrest. That this is occurring all over China in an effort to shut down any and all dissent regarding human rights violations in advance of the Olympics? Well, what in the hell are we going to say about it with our own national reputation so tarnished an entire can of Brasso couldn't begin to touch it.

In China Road, NPR's correspondent Rob Gifford poignantly narrarates the hidden depair of China's AIDS population, people who have acquired the disease from state-sponsored blood-plasma selling program in Henan province. His guide in meeting with these victims? Hu Jia.

When I saw Mr. Hu's name in the NYTimes story, I instantly recalled this powerful part of Gifford's book, precisely because Gifford's furtive narration of the precautions that must be taken in contacting Hu, in switching up taxis and hiding his scandisks from recordings of interviews, and such, because of the oppressive nature of Chinese censorship on any media reports which they deem to make them look bad was riveting. (pp. 90-96) And there, in print in the NYTimes, was Mr. Hu's name as the most recent political prisoner in a long line of crackdowns this year alone as the Chinese government attempts to cleanse itself of any public political criticism in advance of international scrutiny during the Olympics.

All happy happy, joy joy, I suppose.

The Chinese get away with this systematic public cleansing with no real outcry from the United States because we are in no position to lecture anyone at the moment. The US role in human rights enforcement is so weakened as to be laughable. And our strength in terms of diplomacy and national security positioning? Even worse.

The hope was that a new AG would at least come in and begin to restore some semblence of integrity to the Department of Justice in terms of enforcement of the laws on the books and the intent of those who framed those laws being respected? That he would not merely be a presidential toady, cleaning up after WH messes as personal counsel for all things swept under the rug? After yesterday's testimony, that's just drip, drip, dripping away as well.

Actions have consequences. As do inactions. Mukasey's testimony yesterday was a prime example of where we are at the moment -- parsing to the last syllable to cover the asses of the top levels of the Bush Administration in a race to run out the governmental clock. And damn the long-term consequences of using the Nuremberg defense which we so effectively evicerated back in the day when the United States actually stood up FOR something. Appalling doesn't begin to describe where we are...and how we start up the steep, long road from here? Damned if I know.

(Somehow, Joni Mitchell fit my mood in the above YouTube.)