A Time for Change

In the above video, Condoleeza Rice tells a student that the Bush administration did not torture in the video above.  We all know that is a flat out LIE.  Waterboarding is torture.  She did not answer the questions, she deflected.  ThBush administration is hiding behind the quack Office of Legal Counsel memos that were manufactured, but quack memos and the President saying it was not torture cannot serve as an end run on the treaties that we signed nor can Rice attempt to absolve her crimes by hiding behind Presidential authority.  

Rice’s real problem is that the man in the video below is still around.  He was on the Rachel Maddow show and in May 2005 Phillip Zelikow opined, at Condoleeza Rice’s behest, that the administration was torturing and the White House tried to destroy his memos that had an opinion contrary to the legal quackery of John Yoo and Jay Bybee.  Mr. Zelikow worked for Conoleeza Rice.

more about “Rachel Maddow video: Dissent within B…” (please click on link to view video)

Condoleeza knew that Mr. Zelikow determined that the legal reasoning on which Bush and his administration was WRONG.  And they tried to destroy that evidence.  He even said that Condoleeza Rice had grave concerns about it, which is likely why she had Mr. Zelikoff write his memo.  In any event, I posted about this previously which you can see here.  I have also linked to the article that he has written in Foreign Policy magazine to which Zelikow and Maddow refer during the interview.  

The underlying absurdity of the administration’s position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail. 

In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest — if the alleged national security justification was compelling. I did not believe our federal courts could reasonably be expected to agree with such a reading of the Constitution.

Rice’s lie that this was not torture is on video and completely undermined by the very memo that she asked Zelikoff to prepare.

There was another lie.  Rive claims that she did not sign off on torture.  Oh yes she did. Read this from McClatchy.com about the report on torture that was recently released:

A newly declassified narrative of the Bush administration’s advice to the CIA on harsh interrogations shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

***

The Director of Central Intelligence in the spring of 2003 sought a reaffirmation of the legality of the interrogation methods. Cheney, Rice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were among those at a meeting where it was decided that the policies would continue. Rumsfeld and Powell weren’t.

***

September 2003.

_ Administration officials had ongoing concerns about the legality of waterboarding as they continued to justify its legitimacy.

Cheney couldn’t be reached for comment. Rice, through an aide, declined to comment.

Scott Horton from Harper’s has also been following the torture issue very close and has doe some absolutely brilliant reporting about it.  He also reaffirms that Rice signed off on torture:

The torture trail starts and ends in the White House. That is perhaps the most inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the flurry of documents released in the last week—first the OLC memoranda, then a newly declassified report of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and finally an amazing document that Attorney General Eric Holder released yesterday, which has still gained little attention. The Holder note presents a summary of CIA interaction with the White House in connection with the approval of the torture techniques that John Yoo calls the “Bush Program.” Holder’s memo refers to the participants by their job titles only, but John Sifton runs it through a decoder and gives us the actual names. Here’s a key passage:

“[The] CIA’s Office of General Counsel [this would include current Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo] met with the Attorney General [John Ashcroft], the National Security Adviser [Condoleezza Rice], the Deputy National Security Adviser [Stephen Hadley], the Legal Adviser to the National Security Council [John Bellinger], and the Counsel to the President [Alberto Gonzales] in mid-May 2002 to discuss the possible use of alternative interrogation methods [on Abu Zubaydah] that differed from the traditional methods used by the U.S. military and intelligence community. At this meeting, the CIA proposed particular alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding.”

The report continues to implicate more Bush officials: “On July 13, 2002, according to CIA records, attorneys from the CIA’s Office of General Counsel [including Rizzo] met with the Legal Adviser to the National Security Council [Bellinger], a Deputy Assistant Attorney General from OLC [likely John Yoo], the head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice [Michael Chertoff], the chief of staff to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation [Kenneth Wainstein], and the Counsel to the President [Alberto Gonzales] to provide an overview of the proposed interrogation plan for Abu Zubaydah.”

It makes clear that sign-off for torture comes from Condoleezza Rice, acting with the advice of her ever-present lawyer, John Bellinger. Another figure making a key appearance is an Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel named M. Edward Whelan III–presumably the same Ed Whelan who is presently melting his keyboard with defenses of the torture-enablers (Update, April 29, 2009: See correction.) at National Review. (Update: Andrew Sullivan also reported on the appearance of Whelan in the memo, but Whelan responded with a categorical denial that he was involved. This suggests that the memo’s chronology is incorrect and requires some clarification.) The central role played by Rice and Bellinger helps explain the State Department’s abrupt about-face on international law issues related to torture immediately after Rice became Secretary of State and Bellinger became Legal Adviser. It also makes clear that Vice President Cheney and President Bush were fully informed of what has happened and approved.

This disclosure comes after the Senate Armed Services Committee’s detailed report, which debunks almost all the claims that Bush Administration officials have thrown up to put investigators off the trail of the torture policy. The claim that the decision to introduce torture was done to accommodate interrogators who were frustrated by their inability to get results, for instance, is belied by the fact that the White House was busy pursuing torture techniques and authority to introduce them before any prisoners had yet been taken.

But each of these disclosures points again to a great mass of potential evidence remaining securely hidden. Colin Powell himself has repeatedly noted that the National Security Council was the center of activity with respect to the introduction of torture and that it carefully documents its internal processes with minutes and records. He urged those pursuing the issue to press for full disclosure of these materials. His guidance (which is remarkable among other things because he will himself be at the center of the inquiry) is revealed by the Holder memorandum to be spot-on.

She lied to the country and she lied to these students.  She signed off on torture in violation of the Geneve Convention and she knows it.  She may be a war criminal, but she is not stupid.

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