Condi Rice Goes to Europe!

Sounds like Condi is 'fessing up, more or less, to thuggish behavior by the US. A different tune than the one she was trumpeting before she left for Europe...

source: NYT

OOPS! Sorry.....I thought this thread was about a new food craze that was arriving in the UK.

no my lord you are somewhat behind the times

...eh

Ms Condelezza Rice is a dish.

no a Personage of Considerable Proportions within the US Government.

But you knew that

She ate fried chicken as a girl

and played the piano

Softly

So, well so what the ****

She attended the University of Denver.

As a cleaner?

Re: Condi Rice Goes to Europe!


I've never been able to figure out the utility of torturing low-level operatives, since they really don't know anything.

There is no reason why we can't torture the high-level operatives on non-European soil.

Good. There should be financial compensation for innocents who come to harm in this.

Re: Condi Rice Goes to Europe!


Do members of al-Qa'ida have human rights????

A Rice even Gary Hart wouldn't eat I'm guessing....

Ya figure? Cutting their tongues out would be fine then? Removing their testicles with a rusty cleaver ok? Hot coals up their ass?

And this would be fine if done by Americans (or their agents) twenty feet over some fence into Khazikstan?

And fine even where the conclusions of intelligence services like Israel's is that there is no benefit accrued from using torture in any case?

Condi's Trail of Lies
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com

Thursday 08 December 2005

Condoleezza Rice's contradictory, misleading and
outright false statements about the US and torture
have taken America's moral standing - and her own - to
new depths.
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 arrived as the enforcer of the Bush
administration's torture policy. She reminded the
queasy Europeans that their intelligence services, one
way or another, are involved in the rendition of
hundreds of suspected terrorists transported through
their airports for harsh interrogation in countries
like Jordan and Egypt or secret CIA prisons known as
"black sites." With her warnings, Rice recast the
Western alliance as a partnership in complicity. In
her attempt to impose silence, she spread guilt.
Everybody is unclean in the dirty war and nobody has
any right to complain. "What I would hope that our
allies would acknowledge," she said, "is that we are
all in this together."

For the European leaders, facing publics hostile
to U.S. policy in Iraq and torture, Rice's visit was
disquieting. In Italy, prosecutors have issued
indictments of 22 current and former CIA operatives
for their "extraordinary rendition" of an Egyptian
suspect; among those indicted is the former Rome CIA
station chief, whom an Italian judge has ruled has no
immunity from prosecution. Italian Foreign Minister
Gianfranco Fini, asked about renditions, said, "We
know absolutely nothing. We have not one single piece
of knowledge." If the Italian government knew the
facts, it would investigate, he added.

In Britain, the Foreign Office released a
diplomatic disclaimer that it has "no evidence to
corroborate media allegations about the use of UK
territory in rendition operations." But upset members
of the House of Commons have launched a parliamentary
inquiry into whether the U.K. has violated the
European Convention on Human Rights and the United
Nations Convention Against Torture. Foreign Minister
Jack Straw sent Rice a letter requesting any
"clarification the U.S. can give about these reports
in the hope that this will allay parliamentary and
public concerns."

When the Washington Post reported on the eve of
Rice's trip that CIA prisons holding U.S. detainees
exist in Romania, Poland and other Eastern European
nations, it triggered an explosion. Even though
Romania and Poland denied the report, the European
Commission and the Council of Europe began
investigations. The E.C. declared that for any member
state to harbor a CIA prison would be "extremely
serious" and bring down sanctions upon it.

In Germany, Rice was greeted by the new
chancellor, Angela Merkel, eager to repair relations
with the Bush administration made awkward by former
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's opposition to the Iraq
war. Rice's visit was supposed to smooth over the
conflicts of the past, but instead it surfaced new
ones that indicated that the divisions between Germany
- and Europe - and the U.S. are rooted in the Bush
administration's fundamental policies.

Rice arrived in Berlin on the heels of a
Washington Post report about the rendition, to a
secret CIA jail in Afghanistan called the Salt Pit, of
a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who was tortured
and imprisoned for five months in a case of mistaken
identity. After meeting with Rice, Merkel announced
that Rice had acknowledged that the U.S. had made a
"mistake" in the case. But Rice countered with a
statement denying she had said that at all. The
reconciliation with Germany was botched; Merkel was
embarrassed; and Rice's credibility, at least in the
German press, was left in tatters.

Rice had hoped to quell the controversy before she
landed. On Monday, as she boarded her plane at Andrew
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.

Rice has made memorable statements in the past.
There was her appearance before the 9/11 Commission,
in which she had trouble recalling the CIA's
Presidential Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, titled
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," and dismissed
its significance. There were her many assertions about
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction,
including nuclear weapons: "We don't want the smoking
gun to be a mushroom cloud." There was her attack on
Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief on
the National Security Council, for his disclosure that
both she and the president did not regard al-Qaida as
an urgent threat before Sept. 11, 2001, as a
"scurrilous allegation." But her remarks on torture
may turn out to be her most unforgettable full-length
speech, tainting her tenure as secretary of state as
indelibly as Colin Powell's speech making the case for
the Iraq war before the United Nations blotted him.

"Torture is a term that is defined by law," said
Rice. "We rely on our law to govern our operations."
She neglected to explain that "torture" as she used it
has been defined by presidential findings to include
universally defined methods of torture, such as
waterboarding, for which U.S. soldiers were
court-martialed in 1902 and 1968 specifically on the
basis of having engaged in torture.

But the Bush administration has rejected adherence
to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," in the term of
then White House legal counsel and now Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales; rejects torture as it is
defined in the United Nations Convention Against
Torture (although the U.S. is a signatory); and
rejects torture as it is interpreted by other
international expert bodies, including the European
Human Rights Court, whose judgments are binding on the
nations of the Council of Europe.

"The United States does not permit, tolerate or
condone torture under any circumstances," Rice
insisted in her statement. "Moreover, in accordance
with the policy of this administration: The United
States has respected - and will continue to respect -
the sovereignty of other countries." But was the
kidnapping of the Egyptian suspect in Italy that has
resulted in the 22 indictments of CIA operatives a
fiction? Have the Italian prosecutors been made aware
that the event was a figment of their imaginations?
Was holding el-Masri, the innocent German, not a
violation of the sovereignty of another country?

Rice continued: "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." But the Bush administration
has refused to place detainees within the criminal
justice system. Instead, they have been kept in a
legal limbo, denied the protections of both the U.S.
justice system and the Geneva Conventions. The
administration has hid "ghost detainees" from the
International Red Cross. If the suspects are
criminals, they have not been tried as criminals.

Rice cited two cases to make her point: Carlos the
Jackal, the international terrorist captured in Sudan
in 1994, and Ramzi Youssef, the 1993 World Trade
Center bomber. But, unlike current detainees, both
were put on public trial, Carlos in France, Youssef in
the United States. And the European Commission on
Human Rights issued a report that Carlos' rights were
not violated. Both cases refuted in their particulars
the larger argument Rice was making.

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.

If we're talking high-level al-Qa'ida operatives, the CIA can do it right in my front yard so far as I'm concerned.

It is the torture of people not connected to 9/11 that I object to.

hi dag...I posted Blumenthal's piece elsewhere.



oralloy

So, how many potential individuals would fall inside your torturable category?

And how would you know they fit there?

And how about tongue-slicing and nut-cutting? How about - say it might get results - raping their children in front of them?

That dozen or so that the CIA is keeping for themselves.





I'll take their word for it.





I'm less partial to those methods.

I like the one where they are kept in a 50 degree Fahrenheit room and continuously doused with cold water.





Nah. Nothing that harms innocent third parties.

Obviously we here in Germanyy (it's in the very first article of our constitution: "Human dignity shall be inviolable") and the UK (see Lords reject torture evidence use don't have only moral but legal reasons as well for our different opinion to yours.

I think the difference of opinion centers on the word "human".

I reject the proposition that members of al-Qa'ida have human rights.

That said, I see no reason why we have to offend European sensibilities by conducting torture on their soil. We can torture just as well elsewhere.

That's the reason Bush and Rumsfeld want to try members of al-Qa'ida in military tribunals instead of having more formal proceedings like trials or courts marshal to try them.

Well of course the sub humans are not human by definition. I will give you the benefit of the doubt here Oralloy, expand on what you mean...

Well, I certainly didn't call anyone "sub" human.

What I mean is that anyone who joins the organization known as al-Qa'ida automatically forfeits any rights they have as a human being by doing so, in my opinion.

What I mean is, let's torture senior members of al-Qa'ida for information, then torture them for fun, then kill them and leave their bodies in a ditch somewhere.

I'm not sure how to expand on it any further than that.