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Senate confirms attorney general

Retired federal judge Michael Mukasey listens during a press conference with US President George W. Bush on Sept. 17 at the White House in Washington. The US Senate confirmed Mukasey as the country's new attorney general on Thursday. PHOTO: AFP

The US Senate confirmed retired judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general to replace Alberto Gonzales, who was forced from office in a scandal over his handling of the Justice Department.

Mukasey was confirmed late Thursday as the US' 81st attorney general after a sharp debate over his refusal to say whether the waterboarding interrogation technique, which simulates drowning, is torture.

US President George W. Bush thanked the Senate, even though the margin had been whittled down from nearly unanimous by a sharp debate over Mukasey's refusal to say whether the waterboarding interrogation technique is torture.

"He will be an outstanding attorney general," Bush said in a statement from his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Republicans were solidly behind Bush's nominee. Democrats said their votes were not so much for Mukasey as they were for restoring a leader to a Justice Department left adrift after Gonzales' resignation in September.

In the end, Mukasey was confirmed by a 53-40 vote. Six Democrats and one independent joined Republicans in sealing his confirmation.

The choice, according to one of those Democrats, was essentially between "whether to confirm Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general or whether to leave the Department of Justice without a real leader for the next 14 months," said one Democratic supporter, Senator Dianne Feinstein.

"This is the only chance we have," she said, referring to Bush's threat to appoint an acting attorney general not subject to Senate confirmation.

But members of her own party did not agree. Mukasey, his opponents argued, refused to say whether waterboarding is torture and put the onus on Congress to pass a law against the practice.

Mukasey has called waterboarding personally "repugnant," and in a letter to senators said he did not know enough about how it has been used to define it as torture. Discussing it, he said, could make interrogators and other government officials vulnerable to lawsuits.

Waterboarding, used by interrogators to make someone feel as if he is going to drown, is banned by domestic law and international treaties. But US law applies to Pentagon personnel and not the CIA. The administration will not say whether it has allowed the agency's employees to use it against terror detainees.
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