In response to U.S. Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey's refusal to say
whether waterboarding is torture, the Governor this morning issued the following
statement:

"Waterboarding is torture, and anyone who is unwilling to identify it as
such is not qualified to be the chief legal officer of the United States of
America. If I were in the U.S. Senate, I would vote against Mukasey unless
he denounces such specific forms of torture.

"Torture does not work. Mistreatment backfires and destroys our international
leadership, as we saw with Abu Ghraib. Torture also endangers our own troops.
The standards we adopt may well be what our own troops are subjected to.

"Anytime one makes a person think he or she is being executed, the very nature
of waterboarding, it obviously is a violation of the U.S. Constitution, international
law, and basic human decency.

"ABC News has described waterboarding as follows: 'The prisoner is bound
to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane
is wrapped over the prisoner's face, and water is poured over him. Unavoidably,
the gag reflex kicks in, and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost
instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.'

"If another nation engaged in waterboarding against American citizens, we
would denounce that country and call the practice barbaric, and rightly so.

"We must stand against torture without equivocation, without compromise,
and without exception. Torture is a violation of everything we stand for as
Americans and as human beings."