Torturing the Facts - New York Times
The New York Times

December 7, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist

Torturing the Facts
By
MAUREEN DOWD

Our secretary of state's tortuous defense of supposedly nonexistent C.I.A.
torture chambers in Eastern Europe was an acid flashback to Clintonian
parsing.

Just as Bill Clinton pranced around questions about marijuana use at Oxford
during the '92 campaign by saying he had never broken the laws of his
country,
so Condoleezza Rice pranced around questions about outsourcing torture by
suggesting that President Bush had never broken the laws of his country.

But in Bill's case, he was only talking about smoking a little joint, while
Condi is talking about snatching people off the street and throwing them
into
lethal joints.

"The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of
detainees," she said.

It all depends on what you mean by "authorize," "condone," "torture" and
"detainees."

Ms. Rice also claimed that the U.S. did not transport terrorism suspects
"for the purpose of interrogation using torture." But, hey, as Rummy likes
to say,
stuff happens.

The president said he was opposed to torture and then effectively issued
regulations to allow what any normal person - and certainly a victim - would
consider
torture. Alberto Gonzales et al. have defined torture deviancy downward to
the point where it's hard to imagine what would count as torture. Under this
administration, prisoners have been hung by their wrists and had electrodes
attached to their genitals; they've been waterboarded, exposed to extreme
heat
and cold, and threatened with death - even accidentally killed.

Does Ms. Rice think anyone is buying her loophole-riddled defense? Not with
the Italians thinking of rounding up C.I.A. officers to ask them whether
they
abducted a cleric in Milan. And with Torquemada Cheney slouching around
Capitol Hill trying to circumvent John McCain, legalizing torture at the
C.I.A.'s
secret prisons, by preventing Congress from requiring decent treatment for
U.S. prisoners.

As The Times's Scott Shane reported today, a German man, Khaled el-Masri,
says he was kidnapped, beaten and spirited away to Afghanistan by C.I.A.
officers
in an apparent case of mistaken identity in 2003.
He is suing the former C.I.A. chief George Tenet and three companies
allegedly involved in the clandestine flights.

Mr. Masri, a 42-year-old former car salesman, was refused entry to the U.S.
on Saturday. He had intended to hold a news conference in Washington
yesterday,
but ended up talking to reporters over a video satellite link, telling how
he was beaten, photographed nude and injected with drugs during five months
in detention.

Mr. Masri said through an interpreter: "I don't think I'm the human being I
used to be."

When Ms. Rice was a Stanford professor of international relations, she would
have flunked any student who dared to present her with the sort of willfully
disingenuous piffle she spouted on the eve of her European trip.

Maybe she figures that if she was able to fool people once with doubletalk
about W.M.D., she can fool them again with doubletalk about rendition.

As chatter spreads about Condi as a possible presidential contender, we are
left wondering, once more, who this woman really is. Is she doing this
willingly,
or is she hemmed in by the powerful men around her? As a former national
security adviser who has had the president's ear for five years, did she try
to
fight the appalling attempt to shred the Geneva Conventions, or did she go
along with it? Is she doing Vice's nefarious bidding on torture, just as she
did on ginning up the case for invading Iraq?

As Condi used weasel words on torture, Hillary took a weaselly position on
flag-burning. Trying to convince the conservatives that she's still got a
bit
of that Goldwater Girl in her, the woman who would be the first woman
president is co-sponsoring a Republican bill making it illegal to desecrate
the American
flag. The red staters backing this measure are generally the ones who
already can't stand Hillary, so they won't be fooled.

The senator doing Clintonian triangulating is just as transparent as the
secretary doing Clintonian parsing.

Speaking of silly masquerades, who does Judge Samuel Alito Jr. think he's
fooling by presenting himself as a reasonable jurist? Here's a guy whose
entire
career seems to be based on interfering with women's lives. He wanted to
overturn Roe v. Wade, condoned the strip search of a 10-year-old girl and
belonged
to a conservative alumni club that resisted the admission of women to
Princeton.

All in all, a bad week for women - sheer torture to watch.

Posted by Miriam V