By Rebecca Cole
Looks like former Bush administration officials can run from queries about torture, but they can't hide. And the questioners are getting younger.
Yesterday, while answering students' questions at a Washington, D.C school, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked by a fourth-grade student about her take on "the things President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees."
Rice's response, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the story:
"Let me just say that President Bush was very clear that he wanted to do everything he could to protect the country. After September 11, we wanted to protect the country," she said. "But he was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally. So the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country."
The student, Misha Lerner, had actually wanted a more strongly-worded question: "If you would work for Obama's administration, would you push for torture?" Misha's mother, Inna Lerner, said "they" (presumably Misha's teachers, as Rice did not screen questions beforehand) asked him to "soften it and take out the word 'torture.'"
Rice's response followed in a similar vein to the one she used last week when a student at Stanford University pressed her on whether waterboarding is torture:
"The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside our legal obligations,'' Rice replied."We were told, nothing that violates our obligation under the Convention against Torture."She continued, "By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention against Torture.''
The answer Rice provided at Stanford was widely criticized as harkening back to President Nixon's statement that, "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal."
So far, Rice has been mum on the "bitter internal arguments" that, according to an article in today's New York Times, contributed to the demise of the Bush administration's interrogation policy. The article, quoting anonymous sources, states that:
"Yet even as interrogation methods were scaled back, former officials now say, the battle inside the Bush administration over which ones should be permitted only grew hotter."
According to the article, Rice had a "showdown" in 2006 against former Vice President Dick Cheney over the CIA's use of controversial interrogation methods and in 2007 she refused outright "to endorse the executive order" that would revive the program.
Comments
By definition, if a president believes he is above the laws of the nation he governs, he is a criminal. The last criminal we had who believed this resigned the presidency in disgrace. Lying to adults is bad, but lying to children about authorizing torture which had already been defined as illegal (by us) is the worst of all.
Posted by: Grandblvd03 | May 4, 2009 12:46 PM
She looks pretty foolish trying to use logic to deceive the kids. How come college and elementary school students ask tougher questions than journalists?
Posted by: Flo | May 4, 2009 1:12 PM
Hola Flo,
Flo, I think that your somewhat rhetorical question is on to something. There are a few key words here, that the average 4th grader is not going to throw together all in one sentence. I am most self-assured of that based on my most miserable two years as a teacher in the Failure Incorporated public school system. Those words being: administration, methods, information, and detainees. This was a "coached" question, I surely do believe. But hey, U gotta nail those evil Bush folk at every opportunity.
Posted by: Django - N Exile somewhere in/around the 30th Parallel | May 4, 2009 2:20 PM
You said a mouthful, sister.
Just re-read that first quote of hers.
They would do nothing "illegal".
They were relying on the "advice of counsel."
Only problem: the counsel was Dr. Mengele.
So circular. So dishonest. When you realize they had their shills, Professor YooHoo and Torture Judge Bybee writing the "legal opinion" that seems to say everything is OK as long as it doesn't cause "pain equal to death or major organ failure".
(How would you ever be able to assess that on the Pain-o-Meter? Dead men tell no tales, do they?)
Google "Is it safe?" and watch those 2 U Tube clips of the great Laurence Olivier practicing dentistry.
Under Professor YooHoo and Judge Bybee's regime, no torture was committed. At worst, dental malpractice.
This babe is running for office somewhere down the line, but for now, she's coming across as Bush's Leni Riefenstahl.
Except Leni was better looking.
Posted by: ornery | May 4, 2009 2:28 PM
She looks pretty foolish trying to use logic to deceive the kids. How come college and elementary school students ask tougher questions than journalists?
Posted by: Flo | May 4, 2009 1:12 PM
Pretty foolish to think that the only one paying attention to her answer was the fourth grader...
I am with you on the tough questions not asked by journalists though- We are all still waiting anxiously for the current WH press corp groupies to start doing their job and start asking the messiah real questions as well.
Weird beginning line to this story "Looks like former Bush administration officials can run from queries about torture, but they can't hide."
Looks like this "journalist " has her mind made up as to whether enhanced interrogation techniques are torture and that the admin is running from queries - if there is anyone running - I would refer her to Pelosi's deer in the headlights stammering response to why her DEM led house did nothing, despite her knowledge of the use of the techniques...
Posted by: heartburn | May 4, 2009 2:30 PM
The King has spoken. Let it be written, let it be done!
Posted by: Y. Brenner | May 4, 2009 3:06 PM
Hmmmmm, most people can't ID the VP, most folks can't even ID their own governor or senators, yet we are suppose to believe that this 4th grader asked this question? You believe that and I have some land in the Cayman Islands I need to sell.
Funny, more than 70 percent of the American people are OK with "torture" if it means saving lives. Yet, this 4th grader asks about torturing detainees?
Posted by: John D | May 4, 2009 3:07 PM
Funny, more than 70 percent of the American people are OK with "torture" if it means saving lives. Yet, this 4th grader asks about torturing detainees?
Posted by: John D | May 4, 2009 3:07 PM
You can always count on John D to show up to sing the praises of torture. The volk...I mean the people, demand it for their own protection, so the Gestapo....I mean the CIA has no choice but to torture. Beside the Fuhrer.... I mean President Bush, said it was ok, so what's the problem?
Posted by: Dr. Strangelove | May 4, 2009 4:03 PM
That's typical, the righties question whether the 4th grader was coached, and ignore Condi's BS "if daddy says it's okay..." answers.
Posted by: Flo | May 4, 2009 4:12 PM
John D, am in total agreement with you, here. This is NOT the type of thing that a 4th grader would ask. Someone, a reporter or teacher maybe, wrote this question on an index card and pinned it on an article of clothing. I recognize the under-handed stylistic workmanship.
Posted by: Django - N Exile somewhere in/around the 30th Parallel | May 4, 2009 4:18 PM
John D's 70% is bogus; repeat it every day, John D, it ain't true.
Posted by: mort | May 4, 2009 4:54 PM
Ahhh Mort, sorry, but the proof is in the pudding as they say. While different polling organizazations come up with varying results, the common refrain is that most polling outfits show that most Americans do support at least some torture in at least some occasions;
Here is MSNBC, which should satisfy the lefty loons, that shows 61 percent of Americans support it as do those in many other countries polled:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10345320/
And this link sums up a few Rasmussen questions:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/04/023399.php
By the way, CBS, Gallop and other polls show most Americans are NOT in favor of any terrorist torture probe, AND more Americans than not want Gitmo to stay open.
Posted by: John D | May 4, 2009 5:42 PM
Ok John D, you support the use of torture, and believe most Americans do as well. Fine. Is torture only Ok when Americans do it? Is it OK for Iran to torture if they think it will save Iranian lives? How about Vietnam? If they thought torturing somone could save Vietnamese lives, are you ok with that? How about Saddam Husein, was it OK for him to torture radical islamicists who were in oppostion to his redgime, and who were a threat to the safety of other Iraqi citizens? Should we apologize to those nations for criticizing their use of torture, since you believe there is nothing wrong with the use of torture?
Posted by: SRT | May 4, 2009 6:04 PM
Flo, let us reason together. A 4th grader wants to know how do u like living in the White House? Do you have a dawg? Who do you want to win on AI? Not some modestly ambitious question on “torture”.
If, for the moment, we did accept your premise, then, what is Ms. Rice supposed to say. Does she go into a long discourse on how the “detainees” ended up in the position that they are in. That, any reasonable country would be inclined to question / interrogate them, including one run by the great Obama, maybe. That, there is a legal team that defines some kind of standard for questioning. That, the democrats had some oversight role and were informed but would now like to deny all of that. This is a group of 4th graders that she is talking too. If it is CNN, or if Ms. Rice were dumb enough to go on MSNBC, then attack away. By all means, but this would not be that place.
Flo, Torture, Salma Hayek, “torture”, Salma Hayek stand-in, "torture", guitarras, Django’s world. The hour is at hand, but let’s try to be fair to Ms. Rice. Regards and have a nice enough evening.
Posted by: Django - N Exile somewhere in/around the 30th Parallel | May 4, 2009 6:09 PM
We'll fix those 4th grade commies; Jack Bauer for Supreme Court
Posted by: jon dee | May 4, 2009 6:36 PM
What's the matter John D.. ashamed of the true Bush legacy that our kids will have to live down and pay for?
Why don't you move to SMU and become a docent at Ws library? Careful though, those schoolkids are an inquisitive lot.
Posted by: Kenny Bunkport | May 4, 2009 8:34 PM
Obviously, Django, she wasn't talking just to 4th graders, she also was talking to the Swamp, whose readers are arguably less intelligent than 4th graders. But she still gave a BS answer, as she also did at Stanford, and we all heard it.
Posted by: Flo | May 4, 2009 10:10 PM
We submerged THREE known terrorists several times for under a minute each time. Wow. We obtained information that unquestionably saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. WOW!
It is so easy to sit back in the comfort of seven years of relative safety in the US and call this decision and action "torture".
Please. If this was your mother, father, wife, husband, child, etc. (Is there ANYONE you love beyond yourself?) and you knew that they would be killed unless you retreived information from one of these three terrorists, would you really refuse to dunk them for a few (or even several) seconds in order to get them to talk? Even if you had doctors standing by (which, by the way, I seemed to miss seeing during the be-headings) to make sure they would not be seriously hurt?
Hindsight is 20/20. Please, take the politics out of this argument. Our leaders were desperate to protect us. They made decisions that they felt were legal in order to save lives. Stop the hatred for just one second and be thankful that someone cared enough for you to do something to keep you and your family safe. These guys weren't water boarded because it was fun to do. These were killers that knew where and how they were going to kill again, and they made light of the fact that they weren't going to divulge it.
Again, if it was someone you cared about personally, you would have done much worse. MUCH worse.
If you deny that, you're a liar. Or worse yet, a coward.
Posted by: Lukas Kelly | May 5, 2009 2:37 AM
Posted by: Lukas Kelly | May 5, 2009 2:37 AM
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
And the North Vietnamese who tortured John McCain claimed they were desperate to protect thier families and children from american bombing raids. I guess you sympathise with the North Vietnamese, not McCain.
Posted by: Nel | May 5, 2009 10:43 AM
Lukas "Kelly".
You need to review some of those BBC documentaries on the Third Reich. Available on U Tube. Just Google any of the names.
In your case, Hess or Goebbels might come closest.
Posted by: ornery | May 5, 2009 11:11 AM
Lefties, three, count them, 3, Al Qaeda operatives, one of whom was Khaleed Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11 and head chopper of Danny Pearl, were waterboarded. None of the waterboarding sessions lasted more than 40 seconds and a doctor was present each time. Members of the Navy Seals go through the exact same thing during training. I hardly consider what we did to those three torture in the same realm as what took place in Vietnam, Soviet Union or in Arab countries today. Got it?
Posted by: John D | May 5, 2009 1:06 PM