If you look at the WaPo’s coverage of Condoleezza Rice’s remarks about the U.S. approach abusive tactics, you might think the Secretary of State said something genuinely encouraging. She didn’t.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the United States prohibits all its personnel from using cruel or inhuman techniques in prisoner interrogations, whether inside or outside U.S. borders. Previous public statements by the Bush administration have asserted that the ban did not apply abroad.
U.S. obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, extend as “a matter of policy” to “U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States,” Rice said here at a news conference with Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko.
The remarks were her latest effort during a week-long European trip to convince skeptics that the United States is committed to fair and decent treatment of terrorism suspects.
There’s good reason for the widespread skepticism. Rice’s remarks play fast and loose with the details — and put her very much in the “it depends on what the meaning of torture is” category.
Slate’s Eric Umansky helped set the record straight this morning.
That is obviously what Rice wanted people to hear — that U.S. personnel are prohibited from engaging in “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” anywhere. But it is not what she said. Here’s the out: While Rice asserted that the U.S. abides by the “obligations” of the anti-torture treaty across the globe, the administration’s legal position is that those “obligations” don’t extend to the treatment of foreigners being held overseas. In other words, according to the administration’s long-standing legal position, CIA interrogators in say, secret prisons in North Africa aren’t bound to treat foreign prisoners humanely.
So, when Rice tells skeptical Europeans that American personnel follow the rules on torture and abuse no matter what country they’re in, what she isn’t saying is that the Bush administration doesn’t believe the rules count when it comes to non-American detainees in non-American prisons — which is where nearly all of the scandalous abuse has taken place.
Rice, in other words, is telling the truth insomuch as she defines her terms, without acknowledging what those definitions are. It’s breathtaking.