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Condi Admits White House Role in CIA Interrogation Talks
In a big admission from the Bush White House, Condoleezza Rice has admitted to Senate investigators that senior administration officials met repeatedly between 2002 and 2003 to discuss the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees.
In written statements to Senate investigators looking into the use of torture against detainees, Rice gives new details about administration members who were involved, and their consideration of a military training program, SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) to be used in interrogation.
From the L.A. Times:
In particular, Rice wrote in the Sept. 12 statement that officials discussed simulated torture techniques that elite U.S. soldiers were subjected to as part of a survival training program, and that she and other officials were told that such methods "had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm."Rice, who was serving as national security advisor at the time of the discussions, did not identify the source of that assertion. She was referring to a U.S. military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, which at times has included waterboarding and other controversial methods subsequently employed by the CIA.
. . . Rice did not disclose who at the meetings, but said that she had "asked Atty. Gen. [John] Ashcroft personally to review and confirm the legal advice" being prepared by the Department of Justice on the CIA's interrogation plans.
Other senior officials who routinely attended so-called principals meetings included then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Alberto R. Gonzales, then the presidential counsel; and David S. Addington, the vice president's counsel.
Josh
Zachary
I'd REALLY love to see Condi get waterboarded.
But tha's prob;ly just mean, ol' vindictive me, hunh?
September 25, 2008 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Too quick, Woody.
I suspect she's got really good pitch perception.
If so, we just need to make sure she never sits down at a properly tuned piano for the rest of her life.
September 25, 2008 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
What frosts me is that we let them get away with it.
Is it too late to start impeachment hearings?
Yeah, I guess it is.
-- ARG!
September 25, 2008 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
How about Nov 5th?
September 25, 2008 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
"In particular, Rice wrote in the Sept. 12 statement that officials discussed simulated torture techniques that elite U.S. soldiers were subjected to as part of a survival training program, and that she and other officials were told that such methods "had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm."
So, the "simulated" torture techniques "had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm."
Not surprising, What about the real thing causing significant physical or psychological harm?
Typical, sidestepping the issue, hoping people will apply a misleading (but probably true in itself) statement to the subject under discussion.
September 25, 2008 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess the CIA, our contracted interrogators and cooperating countries didn't get Condi's memo to only simulate torture. Maybe the memo said the approved technique was to show Monty Python reruns of the Spanish Inquisition. That would surely cause the prisoners to cave.
September 25, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Other senior officials who routinely attended so-called principals meetings included then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Alberto R. Gonzales, then the presidential counsel; and David S. Addington, the vice president's counsel.
Ladies and gentlemen, your real axis of evil
September 25, 2008 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
No doubt it is just a coincidence that this information was made public at a time when the press is focused on the economic crisis and the presidential campaign.
September 25, 2008 10:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
January 20, 2009: Obama lifts his hand from the holy book of his choice and leans back and speaks is a hushed voice to the Secret Service Agent standing behind him.
The Agent lifts his hand to his face and speaks into his cuff.
Obama turns to address to the American people. George W. Bush and key members are escorted onto an airplane for little trip ti the Hague.
September 25, 2008 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
You think this is funny but there is real discussion among political scientists and human rights organizations that sometime in the next Administration the US will be faced with the choice:
Take care of your rogue administration allegations of War Crimes, Human Rights Crimes internally or the World Community will indict and force the US to deliver them to the Hague.
Q: What will be the US Nationalism reaction domestically? Will it be the flash point of an open cultural war?
Q: Would we have to deliver them to the World Court because we cannot do it ourselves.
This is no small matter: My hope is that Obama is as pragmatic as he purports to be:
Appoint Fitzgerald Attorney General----instruct him to put together a new Untouchable's legal team to go out and flush out the neo-fascists and let the investigation go where it goes---use the MOB process....get small fish to give up big fish....person by person and if it leads to a cabal of the Federalist Society----Rove Republican Movement of Permanent Majority---Cheney and his safe and ultimately to the legacy of Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker in Texas---so be it. Make it public, make it unmistakable so we can go back to basic American Ideals and not Blowback Nazism.
September 25, 2008 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nazism? Fascism?
Try googling Smedly Butler coup. He was a 30+ year marine General who became Commandant of Marines in the 1930's. In 1933, Preston Bush (GHWB's father and GWB's grandfather) wanted him to assist in a coup d'etat against Roosevelt and to set up a fascist state in the United States modeled on Italy (Mussolini) and Germany (Hitler).
With GWB's assualt on constitutional rights, it seems that the desire to create a fascist state in the Unites States is still alive and well.
If you can't beat them and force changes on them, join them and change them from within.
Can you remember any of this in your American history, or of it being brought up in the 2000 or 2004 Presidential campaigns?
September 26, 2008 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
But of course she didn't try them out for herself, now, did she? Nor did she watch someone undergoing that, right?
September 25, 2008 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not trying to defend this nonsense, just asking a question...
Isn't it likely that since Rice is undoubtedly choosing her words very carefully, that the methods that did not cause harm meant the training itself?
September 25, 2008 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would so love to see these war criminals prosecuted as such. It would absolutely be the best thing for our country, both internally and for our standing in the world.
September 25, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
me too!
September 25, 2008 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
RWN
I beginning to have a small but growing optimism that we will collectively take strong action against this admininstration to purge & punish the war criminals in our midst . We owe it to the victims , the world, but as importantly to Ourselves -
Hiring Fitzpatrick as our Attorney General would be very good -appointing Comey as the lead in the "Untouchables Unit " would also be very good .
I really do believe Obama would act if credible evidence was put forth that war crimes have been committed - lets depose Goldsmith first !
September 26, 2008 5:18 AM | Reply | Permalink