Torturing the Facts
By MAUREEN DOWD,
Op-Ed Columnist
NYTimes on the Web,
December 7, 2005
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.
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