Politics - Wednesday, January 30, 2008 17:43 - 0 Comments

Attorney general dances around waterboarding issue

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to legally define waterboarding as “torture” during Senate testimony Wednesday, although he acknowledged that if the interrogation technique were performed on him, he would personally “feel that it was.”

During his first testimony since his November confirmation, Mukasey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that it wouldn’t “be appropriate for me to pass definitive judgment on the technique’s legality.”

Interrogation by torture is illegal under U.S. law and Mukasey said labeling waterboarding as torture would give “our adversaries the limits and contours of generally worded laws that define the limits of a highly classified interrogation program.”

Full story from CNN