Mr. Mukasey Goes to Guantánamo

Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet at 12:00 PM on February 27, 2008.

Blink and you'll miss it: At this very moment, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is visiting Guantanamo Bay.

The Associated Press reports:

A Justice Department spokesman says the attorney general arrived Wednesday morning and is expected to spend about six hours at the Naval station.

Peter Carr says the visit will give Mukasey a chance to see first hand the detention facility and to sit down with officials who are involved in military commission hearings for suspected terrorists.

Now, six hours isn't a very long time -- CNN says five hours -- and no word from the D.O.J. on whether the AG will voluntarily undergo a Gitmo-style "enhanced interrogation" for a total immersion experience. (Would that he might, so that we the people might know once in for all whether waterboarding is torture.) Regardless, Mukasey's previously unannounced Cuban jaunt comes at an auspicious moment: mere weeks after the announcement of potential death penalty charges against six detainees -- and following the resignation of Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes, who, in a moment of poorly-considered candor, apparently told a Gitmo prosecutor that the military tribunals were to be rigged. ("We can't have acquittals, we have to have convictions," Haynes told Col. Morris Davis.)

Only time will tell what comes of Mukasey's trip -- he'll be back any minute -- but in the meantime, here's a prediction: Mukasey's tour/fact-finding mission at Guantanamo will yield delightful conclusions about detainee treatment and their access to due process. "Gulag? What Gulag?" Mukasey might say, before he hops on a plane and gets the hell out of there.

Updates pending further developments...

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and Editor of the Rights & Liberties section.