Here's what she said, captured on a video clip:
"By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."Today her Chief of Staff at the Hoover Institution wrote a letter to the New York Times explaining that this quote was taken out of context. Prior to this quote, she had told the same student the following:
"Anything that was legal and was going to make this country safer, the president wanted to do -- nothing that was illegal, and nothing that was going to make the country less safe."He then explains that her statement makes it clear that
"the tactic used was legal not because the president authorized it; rather, the president sought and received legal opinion indicating that it was legal before he authorized it."OK. Fair enough, assuming that that is what she said and that the clip was out of context.
But we are still left with the fact that the opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, the Bybee memo, was written in response to a request to find some way of claiming that waterboarding could legally be used and just how far they could go. If the request had simply been: "is waterboarding legal?" it would not have been written the same way.
So you have a compliant Department of Justice (and there are plenty of other examples of this) twisting its legal reasoning to come up with the answer that was being demanded by the administration. And we know how much pressure XVP (the acronym for cheney that I'm adopting from a HuffPost blogger) brought to bear -- on the CIA and others -- to get them to find what he wanted to justify his "dark side" tactics.
This is doubly disturbing because the OLC is supposed to be the office that defines for the administration what is legal, and it requires the utmost in legal scholarship, unbiased good judgment, and impeccable ethics. And now we know they had been corrupted to help out the cheney/bush war plans as well as rove's political machinations.
Perhaps the video clip was a little unfair to Condi, but it doesn't change anything about her role in all of this. And perhaps she didn't make such a bald statement as Nixon's "if the president does it, it means it's not illegal," but in effect that is almost what happened, isn't it?
Ralph
No, actually, we don't know that. You are assuming that based on what political party you are affiliated with and your position on this issue. John Yoo and Jay Bybee would probably take issue with your proof by assertion.
ReplyDeleteThere is a reason that Obama has done two things:
1. Decided not to close Guantanamo in the near future.
2. Reopened the Military Commissions that he had closed down earlier.
He knows what happens to his approval rating after the next successful attack. He is a rational politician, like Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. Obama has a problem that you don't: protection Registered Voters from harm by Islamist terrorists. While you sit here banging away on your keyboard, you fail to understand the common threat faced by all three individuals: Cheney, Rice, and now, Obama.
Obama has to be successful all the time in defending the country. Bin Laden's people only have to be successful once.
Thanks for your comment, Section 9.
ReplyDeleteYou are right that I do not have the responsibility for protecting our country against attack. And I definitely do not want that awesome responsibility.
But I also do not agree with your implication that whatever the Bush administration did to protect us was justified. The FBI refused to participate in waterboarding, and some of the experienced military interrogators told them it doesn't work, that you get false information.
I could go on at length with the mounting evidence that seems to challenged the meme that it was justified to keep us safe. With all the timelines and the memos and reports that are coming out, it seems clear to me that the main motive for waterboarding Zabaydah 83 times was to get him to "confess" a link between Saddaam and Al Qaeda -- even a false confession, if necessary.
So I think you have two choices: either the administration acted out of mendacious motives or they exercised colossally bad judgment.
Take your pick.