Defending the indefensible

Condi (twin mirrors) Rice is finding out it's a real bitch to work for the Dark Side sometimes. Of course she is in Europe trying to defend the actions of her inhuman masters regarding torture and it is coming off as a very Weak Defense.

IN AN ATTEMPT to quell a growing storm in Europe over the CIA's secret prisons, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday issued a defense based on the same legalistic jujitsu and morally obtuse double talk that led the Bush administration into a swamp of human rights abuses in the first place. Ms. Rice insisted that the U.S. government "does not authorize or condone torture" of detainees. What she didn't say is that President Bush's political appointees have redefined the term "torture" so that it does not cover practices, such as simulated drowning, mock execution and "cold cells," that have long been considered abusive by authorities such as her State Department.

Ms. Rice said, "It is also U.S. policy that authorized interrogation will be consistent with U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture, which prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." What she didn't explain is that, under this administration's eccentric definition of "U.S. obligations," cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is not prohibited as long as it does not occur on U.S. territory. That is the reason for the secret prisons that the CIA has established in European countries and other locations around the world, and for the "renditions" of detainees to countries such as Egypt and Jordan: so that the administration can violate the very treaty Ms. Rice claims it is upholding.

As I mentioned the other day the United States was once beacon of freedom and justice but under the reign of George the Terrible and Darth Cheney it is no better than China. The Post suggests there is a way out.

The only way to remedy the damage is to change the underlying policies. Such a change would help rather than hurt the fight against terrorism. By now the administration should recognize that, whether or not its abductions of terrorist suspects from European countries have been legal or justified, they have surely been counterproductive: The blowback against questionable renditions from Italy, Sweden and Germany has damaged the ability of those countries to support future collaboration with the CIA. If CIA prisoners are still being held in Europe, they probably won't be staying much longer; Washington's Eastern European friends stand to suffer severe censure from the European Union.

One simple step by President Bush would resolve much of the controversy over prisoner abuse, and ease Ms. Rice's journey through Europe this week. The president could accept Sen. John McCain's amendment to the defense appropriations bill, which prohibits "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" for all prisoners held by the United States. The legislation has overwhelming support in Congress, as the White House recognizes; already, the administration has shifted from threatening a veto to bargaining with Mr. McCain over granting immunity to CIA personnel involved in abuses. Once a clear ban on inhuman treatment is in place, the administration will have no legal reason to hold al Qaeda suspects in secret foreign prisons. Even better, Ms. Rice will have more credibility the next time she declares that the United States does not engage in torture.

Of course it won't happen. The Bush administration reminds me of Saddam at his trial, pompously bellowing his innocence when all the world knows he is guilty.

Update
Steve Soto explains how Condi is making life difficult for our European "allies" and our very own Bill in DC directs us to CIA Ruse Is Said to Have Damaged Probe in Milan.

MILAN -- In March 2003, the Italian national anti-terrorism police received an urgent message from the CIA about a radical Islamic cleric who had mysteriously vanished from Milan a few weeks before. The CIA reported that it had reliable information that the cleric, the target of an Italian criminal investigation, had fled to an unknown location in the Balkans.

In fact, according to Italian court documents and interviews with investigators, the CIA's tip was a deliberate lie, part of a ruse designed to stymie efforts by the Italian anti-terrorism police to track down the cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Egyptian refugee known as Abu Omar.

The strategy worked for more than a year until Italian investigators learned that Nasr had not gone to the Balkans after all. Instead, prosecutors here have charged, he was abducted off a street in Milan by a team of CIA operatives who took him to two U.S. military bases in succession and then flew him to Egypt, where he was interrogated and allegedly tortured by Egyptian security agents before being released to house arrest.

Italian judicial authorities publicly disclosed the CIA operation in the spring. But a review of recently filed court documents and interviews in Milan offer fresh details about how the CIA allegedly spread disinformation to cover its tracks and how its actions in Milan disrupted and damaged a major Italian investigation.

It seems to me that pissing off the rest of the world is not the best way to fight the "War on Terror".