Rice, Torture, Evasion

Too busy to read blogs right now--?packing and all, as you know--and I'm sure that everybody and his brother must be commenting on the following, but I canÂ?t help myself. This weekend on Late Edition on CNN, Wolf Blitzer interviewed Condoleezza Rice. A partial transcript follows:

BLITZER: Let's talk a little bit, in the moments we have left -- we don't have a lot of time left -- about torture. Did the president of the United States authorize what some might call torture against certain suspected terrorists being held by the United States?

RICE: Wolf, what the president authorized was that everything would be done within the international treaty obligations and within U.S. law. Those were determinations made by the Justice Department. That's the guidance that he gave, and that's the guidance that he expected people to follow.

BLITZER: Can we go through some of the specifics? What was permissible at Abu Ghraib or at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba? For example...

RICE: No...

BLITZER: ... sleep deprivation? RICE: I'm not going to get into specifics here, Wolf. We are in a situation in which we are in a different war, and in which the American president is determined to do what can be done to protect the American people.

But protecting the American people and getting intelligence information was to be done within the confines of American law and within the confines of our international treaty obligations. The president was clear on that. That's what was authorized.

BLITZER: And in terms of the investigation, where does it stand right now?

RICE: Well, the investigation is still ongoing. As a matter of fact, there are multiple investigations under way, of various charges of abuse.

I think one of the most important lessons out of this is that, in a democracy, there is no guarantee that people will not do bad things. But what can be guaranteed is that there will be transparency, that people will investigate the matter, and that people will be held accountable, who are guilty of whatever they might have done outside of the lines of their authorities.

And so those investigations are under way, and I'm certain that they will be coming to fruition. I just remind people that some people -- there have already been punishments meted out in connection with the Abu Ghraib situation.

What follows might sound a bit cynical, but it isn't. I'm not cynical, I've just learned that we can't trust this administration to shoot straight and tell the truth. If they don't answer a question directly, they're almost certainly trying to mislead us. If they sound like they might be bullshitting, they're bullshitting.

Note that Blitzer asks Rice a direct question:

Did the president of the United States authorize what some might call torture against certain suspected terrorists being held by the United States?

Rice does not answer this question. Instead, she says:

Wolf, what the president authorized was that everything would be done within the international treaty obligations and within U.S. law. Those were determinations made by the Justice Department. That's the guidance that he gave, and that's the guidance that he expected people to follow.

Blitzer asks whether Bush authorized torture, and, instead of answering that question, Rice changes the subject slightly, asserting that everything Bush authorized was legal. We could give many administrations the benefit of the doubt here, but we'?ve learned only too well that this is not such an administration. The fact that Rice refused to say 'no'? means that, in all probability, the answer is 'yes.'? That is, it strongly suggests that it is likely that the president of the United States, George W. Bush, did authorize the use of torture against helpless prisoners in the custody of the U.S.

Rice'?s response (roughly: everything the president authorized was legal)to Blitzer's question is consistent with two possibilities:

Possibility 1: Torture is illegal (under U.S. and international law), and (so) Bush did not authorize torture.

and

Possibility 2: Bush authorized torture, but that'?s o.k. because torture is legal.

But Rice'?s response to Blitzer, that everything Bush authorized is legal, does not tell us which it is, ergo it does not tell us whether Bush authorized torture. Anybody out there naive enough to think that this administration would have answered in this equivocal fashion if the true answer were unequivocally in the negative?

And, in fact, the point of recently-disclosed memos does seem to be to argue that the president can legally--in some sense of '?legally'--?authorize the use of torture. This is more evidence that it is possibility 1 and not possibility 2 that is actual.

At this point--?bless 'im--Blitzer wisely moves to specifics. Say what you will about the guy, but he gets it right a good bit of the time, and he got it exactly right in this case, asking:

BLITZER: Can we go through some of the specifics? What was permissible at Abu Ghraib or at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba? For example...

And then:

RICE: No...

BLITZER: ... sleep deprivation?

RICE: I'm not going to get into specifics here, Wolf.

And why not? Again, if the specifics were innocuous, this administration would eagerly reveal them.

But everything up until now is, perhaps, just tail. Here's the dog part:

RICE: We are in a situation in which we are in a different war, and in which the American president is determined to do what can be done to protect the American people.

Too much cynicism is a bad thing, and we are not entitled to put words in Dr. Rice'?s mouth, but I have to wonder whether what she really meant was this:

the American president is determined to do whatever can be done to protect the American people.

That is, he'?s willing to do whatever it takes. And that could certainly include torture.

But in the end Rice seems to rule that out:

RICE: But protecting the American people and getting intelligence information was to be done within the confines of American law and within the confines of our international treaty obligations. The president was clear on that. That's what was authorized.

This would be comforting if it were not for the fact that the administration apparently had legal experts telling it that torture was legal.

And, of course, we know how this administration conducts its inquiries. Intellectually bankrupt, it does not find the best experts, provide them with the best evidence, and seek their considered judgments. Rather, its modus operandi is to employ the method of inverse criticism, starting with a preferred conclusion, seeking out "experts" who will provide arguments for that conclusion and discounting the conclusions of those who will not. It is this epistemic irresponsibility and viciousness that led us into Iraq. Now it threatens to lead us down the road to perdition.

Furthermore, the administration has given us ample reason to doubt it when it gives such equivocal, indirect responses. As Richard Clarke notes in his book, when Bush was asked whether plans were being made to invade Iraq, he said "there are no plans on my desk," an answer which was, technically speaking, true--the plans were not physically on his desk, they were being formulated elsewhere. This slippery, indirect answer was, of course, intended to make us think that the answer to the question was in the negative when the true answer was in the affirmative.

And Rice herself has employed similar deceptions in the past. When asked whether the administration had been warned about al Qaeda's plans to attack us, Rice responded, roughly, that we had no idea that they'd fly those planes into those buildings on that day, an answer intended to make us think--falsely, as it turns out--that the administration had no reason to think that al Qaeda was planning to attack us at all.

Especially against this background, Rice's refusal to answer Bitzer's question speaks volumes.