<![CDATA[They Tortured With Good Will]]>Condi Rice tries to walk back her statement that if Bush authorized something, it was not illegal. She says instead – in a cosy conversation with Leon Wieseltier – that the president ordered that interrogation go to the limits of the legal. My own sense, from a few off-the-record conversations as well, is that president Bush simply said: do what you have to do, but make sure it's legal. Cheney ran with that. Bush meant it as cover. He needed legal cover to torture in a systematic way. And, because this was the Bush administration, they did what the great leader asked. Even though it was, in fact, impossible. And was impossible. And so America became a torturing country. And Rice sat by and let it happen. And now wants to be in polite society.
I do not believe in being polite to war criminals. I believe in prosecuting them.
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