I guess we'll have to start waterboarding Michael Mukasey in order to get a straight answer out of him. According to all of the "conservatives" we need to retain "Enhanced Interogation Techniques" in order to have the option of gleaning information from a detainee in extreme circumstances ... or the ticking time bomb scenario. This would seem to imply a level of urgency in extracting the information. According to Mr. Mukasey, however, the procedure for using water boarding and other forms of torture would require that those needing these technique must first aquire a judgement from him and the DOJ on whether these techniques are in fact legal and then they would pass this judgement on to the president for a decision on whether to use them in a given case. But he cannot determine now whether in fact water boarding specifically would be legal, since this inquiry has not in fact come before the DOJ during his tenure. So I guess we are in fact going to capture some Islamo Fascist with knowledge of a brief case nuke in NYC and we'll wait for the water boarding request to work it's way through the DOJ ... sounds like a fast process. If in fact the DOJ really wanted to be able to use this technique, they would have a judgement prepared in advance such that this decision could be made quickly. To watch Mukasey dance around this issue continually and have the media allow him to dissemble like this is ludicrous, and if every torture technique will need to pass through the DOJ for approval before use for a legal determination, and approval by the president, then maybe we don't really need them since the ticking time bomb will have gone off already if there ever really was one.