Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chastised Europe
leaders today, saying that before they complain about secret jails for terror
suspects in European nations, they should realize that interrogations of these
suspects have produced information that helped "save European lives."In her remarks, the Bush Administration’s official
response to the reports of a network of secret detention centers, Ms. Rice
repeatedly emphasized that the United States does not countenance the torture
of terrorism suspects, at the hands of either American or foreign captors.<snip>
"We must bring terrorists to justice wherever
possible," she said. "But there have been many cases where the local
government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition
is not a good option.""In those cases," she added, "the
local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in the transfer
of a suspect to a third country, which is known as a rendition."Sometimes, these efforts are misunderstood,"
she said.<snip>
The administration’s secret detention policy has come
under attack from the United Nations, the European Union and Democrats in
Washington. Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, wrote Ms. Rice the
letter from the European Union last Tuesday, demanding an explanation.<snip>
The Bush Administration began drafting Ms. Rice’s statement
last week. Consultations between agencies including the White House, the State
Department and the Central Intelligence Agency continued through the weekend
and culminated with a conference call Sunday night.Ms. Rice insisted that the United States had done nothing
wrong. …
Rice
Chides Europeans on Detention Center Complaints
Condi is on the world-wide stump, talking tough to our allies
and lying about torture. It’s truly absurd at this point. If anyone believes
we’re not torturing people they really have been on a very long reality vacation.
Either that or their politics are just too blind to be worthy of taking them
seriously. Just ask John McCain. This is the speech that bloggers across the
web were talking
about over the week-end.
I particularly got a kick out of the highlighted section above.
The translation is that sometimes Terror Guy and his team of torturers can’t
get what they want out of someone on our soil, so he or the C.I.A. talks to
our friends in Egypt or somewhere like Kazakhstan, to see if they’ll take our
bad guy. It’s then actually their "sovereign choice to cooperate."
Oh, and if Terror Guy and his team decide to ship someone off to a black site,
out of sight, out of mind, baby. Damn the methods, full speed ahead and just
tell me what you end up learning. Never mind that it will likely be untrue.
There is a reason McCain’s amendment talks about not torturing
here or somewhere else, like a location over there. It’s so Terror Guy can’t
conveniently say, no one is being tortured on American soil.
We’ll have to see if the world thinks torture, rendition and all
manner of inhumane incarceration are going to be the new gold code around the
world. You’d think former military men like Rummy would get it. Hey, but now
he’s just another civilian puke.
It will be our troops now on the line that take the hit. Besides,
torture and rendition to some black site where God knows what goes on, makes
our moral authority pretty shaky. It turns us into our enemy. Hey, but Condi
doesn’t seem to care. But whatever you do, don’t misunderstand her efforts.
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