Rice admits officials approved ‘harsh interrogation techniques’

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
RAW STORY
Friday, September 26, 2008

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently became the first Bush administration official to admit that high-level discussions of the use of torture had taken place in 2002 and 2003.

According to a written statement provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month and released on Wednesday by committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), officials were told that waterboarding and other “harsh interrogation measures” routinely used in a survival training program for US soldiers would not cause “significant” harm if used on prisoners.

Rice’s statement is the first acknowledgment of those meetings by any of the officials involved. Rice did not name the other officials who were present, but reports last spring based on anonymous sources mentioned Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

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MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called the release of Rice’s statement “a soul of the nation story,” noting that torture violates the Geneva Conventions and is a criminal act under the US War Crimes Act of 1996. She emphasized that “we just can’t get this issue behind us,” even with the Bush administration on its way out of office, because “issues like this, like torture, still define who we are as a country. It’s still unfinished business.”

Maddow was then joined by Alex Gibney, the director of the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, an examination of the US use of torture against suspected terrorists.

Gibney agreed that “I don’t think it’s over at all. … What’s not over is how we reckon with the past. We can’t go forward and capture our kind of moral reputation if we don’t reckon with the past and what we’ve done.”

“Should policy-makers be prosecuted?” Maddow asked. “Could they be?”

“They could be if politicians had the will to do so,” Gibney replied. “I think, at the very least, a truth commission with subpoena power would be something valuable. … This is not a case of a few bad apples. This is a rotten barrel. And the rotten barrel is the civilian administration.”

Gibney explained that in the course of making his film, “I had to interview a number of the guards and interrogators. … I didn’t come into it with much sympathy for them. I ended up having a great deal of sympathy for them. They were scapegoats for a policy that was coming on down from on high.”

Gibney said he has also wondered why torture keeps being used when it is known to produce unreliable information. “I fear that the answer is because they were always getting back the information that they wanted to hear,” he concluded. “And that is what torture delivers.”

This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast September 25, 2008.

 

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10 Responses to “Rice admits officials approved ‘harsh interrogation techniques’”

1. RayB Says:
   September 26th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

   Don’t forget that Nancy Pelosi knew!!!

2. MG Says:
   September 26th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

   Treason

3. Craig Says:
   September 26th, 2008 at 4:53 pm

   Wow – what’s this?? Has Rice’s conscience gotten the best of her?? I didn’t know she had one, I’m kind of impressed.

   Well, maybe my admiration is premature. Let’s just say when she comes out for 911 Truth, comes clean with her involvement in all this crime in the last 7 years, asks for forgiveness she’ll have won me over.

4. George W Says:
   September 26th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

   Condoleeza is hot.

5. beavis Says:
   September 26th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

   yeah, huh huh. I would like totally do her and stuff.

6. Lorenzo Thomas Says:
   September 27th, 2008 at 10:20 am

   They want a fascist planet with the superwealthy ruling it all
   Since we’re too independent, America must be led to fall
   When our credit’s been exhausted to subdue the Middle East,
   They’ll install our debtor nation in the body of The Beast
   Traitor…Dare call it treason

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw5dP5gy2Vs

7. Bansidh Says:
   September 27th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

   Everyone who knew should be brought to trial. It is illegal ,not to mention immoral not to mention it doesn’t work. During the European witch hunts they all confessed to being witches and then named their children, neighbors, mothers , fathers etc . People who are tortured will say anything and the torturers know that. They just want people to blame for whatever crime they need to solve. They grab anyone and torture them until they confess. I am so ashamed of my country.

8. Mister Jimmy Says:
   September 27th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

   I understand she doesn’t ‘ do’ guys–ladies only. Everybody knew this was (and is) going on.

9. m.arshad Says:
   September 28th, 2008 at 2:47 am

   lets waterboard the jews in american administration identified with possible links to 9-11 and mr bush working in cahoots with them to bring about armageddon and we will see what comes out of his arse and brain.

   after that we can put him in a cell with homosexuals who will interrogate him more from his rear regarding hidden information and poison gas in his posterior.

   the jews tell us that if only they had shot hitler before the holocaust then the world would have been a better place, which i do not believe because wherever the jew has gone there has always been tyranny and dictatorship promoted by them and history is full of their misdeeds in all cultures and empires which they infested and ultimately brought down.

   there are a lot jews running around in the world causing trouble to everyone under false pretences and need to be introduced to some lead in the head.

10. mythicShadow Says:
    September 28th, 2008 at 8:07 am

    welcome to amerika

    http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv3yuRdD2oE