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For Brad, who enjoyed
reminding us of Bush’s “shining” employee. The case Dr. Rice did not mention while in Europe this week
nevertheless made the front page, above the fold of the NYT today, Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/politics/09intel.html And significantly, the
British courts have ruled that evidence obtained by torture is not admissible in
British courts. Bush’s legacy
will be his war and that of a presidency tainted, if not defined by torture. By
her performance this week, his minder/protégé will be Madame Torture. There
seems to be great reliance on the fact that the Bush administration did not
ratify the international war crimes court, and this may provide a sense of
immunity, but it will not provide exoneration. Excerpts from: Condi's trail of lies Condoleezza
Rice's contradictory, misleading and outright false statements about the U.S.
and torture have taken America's moral standing - and her own - to new depths. Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, Dec. 08, 2006 The metamorphosis of Condoleezza Rice from the chrysalis of the protégé
into the butterfly of the State Department has not been a natural evolution but
has demanded self-discipline. She has burnished an image of the ultimate
loyalist, yet betrayed her mentor, George H.W. Bush's national security advisor
Brent Scowcroft. She is the team player, yet carefully inserted knives in the
back of her predecessor, Colin Powell, climbing up them like a ladder of
success. She is the person most trusted on foreign policy by the president, yet
was an enabler for Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives. Now her
public relations team at the State Department depicts her as a restorer of
realism, builder of alliances and maker of peace. On her first trip to Europe early this year she left the sensation of
being fresh by listening rather than lecturing. The flirtation of power
appeared to have a more seductive effect than arrogance. So the old face became
a new face. But on this week's trip the iron butterfly emerged. Rice had hoped to
quell the [German] controversy before she landed. On Monday, as she boarded her
plane at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, she delivered a lengthy
statement on torture. Her speech was remarkable for its defensive, dense and
evasive tone. It was replete with half-truths, outright falsehoods, distortions
and subterfuges. Her
remarks can never sway or convince any European leader, foreign ministry or
intelligence service, which have the means to make their own judgments. In her effort to persuade world opinion
and reassure the American public, she raised the debate over torture to greater
prominence and virtually invited inspection of her claims. "The United States does not transport, and
has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of
interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the
airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country
where he or she will be tortured." But the German
government was reported to have a list of 400 flights over European airspace
for the purpose of renditions. And Amnesty International reports that there
have been 800 such flights. Once again, Rice relies upon her own definition of
"torture" to deny it. She went on: "The
United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a
country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United
States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured." In fact, the U.S.
receives assurances from those countries that it would be unlikely that the
suspects will be tortured, a technical loophole that provides for a washing of
hands. Everybody on all sides understands that there will be torture, as there
has been. Rice's legal
interpretations were authoritative, bland and bogus. It is hard to say whether
they should be called Orwellian for their intentional falsity or Kafkaesque for
their unintentional absurdity. "International
law allows a state to detain enemy combatants for the duration of
hostilities," she said. But the administration has vitiated international
law with its presidential findings. The "global war on terror" is a
conflict without end; its time limit extends into perpetuity. So long as terror
is used as a tactic, or the threat of terror exists, which it always does, a
state of war, such as it is, justifies indefinite detention. Then, Rice
presented as the administration's position precisely the position it opposes:
"Detainees may only be held for an extended period if the intelligence or
other evidence against them has been carefully evaluated and supports a
determination that detention is lawful. The U.S. does not seek to hold anyone
for a period beyond what is necessary to evaluate the intelligence or other
evidence against them, prevent further acts of terrorism, or hold them for
legal proceedings." …One case Rice did not
cite was that of Ibn
al-Shaykh al-Libi,
a captured al-Qaida operative, whose claims about Saddam Hussein's possession
of WMD were used by the administration to build the case for the Iraq war.
"We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and
poisons and deadly gases," President Bush said on Oct. 7, 2002, drawing on
al-Libi's information. Al-Libi also provided the basis for a dramatic high
point of Secretary of State Powell's U.N. speech: "the story of a senior
terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al
Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.
I will relate to you now, as he himself, described it." But al-Libi had
been tortured and repeated to his interrogators what they had suggested to him.
The Defense Intelligence Agency reported in February 2002 that al-Libi's
information was dubious, and the CIA also questioned its credibility in a
report in January 2003 -- both reports made before the war. Rice's various
statements created a pandemonium across Europe that she tried to quiet with a clarification
Wednesday
in Ukraine. The policy she had just declared we did not follow she
announced we would no longer pursue. "As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States'
obligations under the CAT [U.N. Convention Against Torture], which prohibits
cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment - those obligations extend to U.S.
personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside
of the United States," Rice said at a press conference with Ukrainian
President Viktor Yushchenko. Rice's erratic journey
also raises the question of her own part in the policy. The Washington Post
story on el-Masri reports that Rice intervened on the side of informing the
German government, a disclosure that resulted in el-Masri's release. This fact
suggests that Rice has a degree of authority and knowledge in the realm of
detainees and "black sites." Since 2003, Rice has
repeatedly told representatives of Human Rights Watch and other similar
organizations that the U.S. does not torture. There is no trail of memos tracing her involvement in the titanic
struggle over U.S. torture policy between Powell and the senior military on one
side and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft's Justice Department on
the other. Was the national security advisor completely out of the loop? On
Nov. 19, ABC News reported, "Current
and former CIA officers tell ABC News there is a presidential finding, signed
in 2002, by President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John
Ashcroft, approving the [harsh interrogation] techniques, including
waterboarding."
That technique has its
origin in the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, in 1490, a baptized Christian who
was a secret Jew, a converso named Benito Garcia, was subjected to water
torture. The process drew out of him a confession of the ritual murder of a
Christian child by crucifixion to get his blood for a magic ceremony to halt
the Inquisition and bring about Jewish control. The incident greatly helped
whip up the fear that led to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, as described by
James Reston Jr. in his new book, "Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition,
and the Defeat of the Moors." Since the Inquisition,
the method of waterboarding has been little refined. But Rice, like Bush, says
we did not and will not torture anymore. http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/12/08/condi/index_np.html |
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