I Have No Recollection

The Maher Arar case takes a turn for the preposterous as Condoleeza Rice "admitted on Wednesday the United States had mishandled" his case but "stopped short of an apology." So, what, it was mishandled but she's not sorry it was mishandled? Why not? Meanwhile, if she's suffering from Alzheimer's maybe she ought to resign:

Rice did not apologize in the hearing and avoided directly answering a question from Massachusetts Democrat Rep. William Delahunt who asked if she knew Arar was tortured in Syria.

"You are aware of the fact that he was tortured?" Delahunt asked.

"I am aware of claims that were made," she responded.

But when asked if the United States had received any diplomatic assurances from Syria that Arar would not be tortured, Rice said her memory of the events had faded and she would have to respond later to the question.

Uh huh. It's kind of shocking how this administration ricocheted so quickly between outsourcing torture to Syria to refusing to have any diplomatic relations with Syria. There's a happy middle ground where you show a willingness to conduct diplomacy with "bad guy" regimes but don't actually engage in the practices that make them bad guys.

Comments

I'd love to hear someone at a Democratic candidates' debate ask them whether, as President, they'd apologize to Maher Arar on behalf of the United States. I bet Clinton would squirm under that one.

Posted by Ryan | October 24, 2007 5:55 PM

The Bush/Rice position is the exact opposite of Obama's position.

We'll get Country X to do our dirty work in private, by rendering prisoners to them with a wink and a nod agreement that they won't be "tortured," a word that means nothing to us anyway, but in public we'll ratchet up the belligerent rhetoric on them until they stop cooperating with us at all and start actively doing many more things that are counter to our interests.

Posted by bob | October 24, 2007 6:07 PM

Actually, I think it's a bit of a clever "two-fer."

Remember, one of the main original reasons we cited for attacking Saddam's Iraq was that Saddam brutally tortured people...

So: We send people to Syria to be tortured, then afterwards use such monstrous behavior as a humanitarian casus belli to invade and overthrow the regime horrible enough to do such an evil thing...

Posted by RKU | October 24, 2007 6:08 PM

All these are features, man, not bugs, as anyone with more than ten neurons will tell you.

Posted by gregor | October 24, 2007 6:33 PM

Welcome to American politics, 2007-style, where people can be arrested for calling Rice a war criminal (because that's oh so very uncivil), then she offers the kind of defence that you'd expect to hear from a war criminal.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 24, 2007 6:53 PM

Syrians could kill Maher Arar or keep him forever, or pass him to Guantanamo, where we would keep him forever, instead, they let him return to Canada. Reliable allies do not do things like that.

Sadly, this is not a joke, and Arar should thank US government for his life, because it decided to worsen the relations with Syria. I forgot how it started, I think that from allegations that a huge convoy of WMD-laden vehicles trecked from Baghdad to Syria.

Posted by piotr | October 24, 2007 9:26 PM

Is there anyone still interested in the existence of this stupid token Uncle Tom bitch?

I mean, Colin Powell and Rice were both recently described in a book as "pedestrian minds and perhaps deferential personalities", but at least Powell had serious questions about his role - although not the balls to reveal them until he left that role.

Rice is just a truly sickening individual with no apparent redeeming qualities whatever. She's a straight toady - nothing more.

Six months after "The Lone Gunmen" was broadcast with a plot of flying a plane into the World Trade Center, she can sit there and say that nobody ever imagined terrorists using planes as weapons.

She can also sit there and talk about "birth pangs" of a new ME while Israel is murdering Lebanese civilians from the air and dropping cluster bombs to murder them from the ground.

She's either the dumbest bitch in the US government or one seriously pathological liar - or both.

If Bush and Cheney are ever sent to the dock in The Hague, this broad needs to be there with them.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 24, 2007 11:49 PM

Re Richard Steven Hack

I hold no brief for Ms. Rice who I consider an Uncle Tom, female version, but Mr. Hacks' comment are rich coming from a convicted armed robber and ex-con. Given that Mr. Hack was incarcerated in a federal slammer, I assume that his offense was bank robbery. We can assume that he stuck a gun in some poor bank tellers' face and said something to the effect of, "your money or your life." Mr. Hack has accused the IDF of cowardice for bombing targets in Lebanon. It would be hard to conceive of anything more indicative of cowardice then shoving a gun in an unarmed persons' face.

Posted by SLC | October 25, 2007 8:59 AM

Ryan,

i bet asking Clinton if she would cease the rendition program to countries where torture is common would get a looong pause.

Posted by david | October 25, 2007 10:10 AM

Ryan,

i bet asking Clinton if she would cease the rendition program to countries where torture is common would get a looong pause. Forget a simple apology...

Posted by david | October 25, 2007 10:10 AM

Mr. Hack has accused the IDF of cowardice for bombing targets in Lebanon. It would be hard to conceive of anything more indicative of cowardice then shoving a gun in an unarmed persons' face.

I guess you attack the critics that you can, but this is hardly a stirring defense of bombing civilians.

Posted by mpowell | October 25, 2007 11:59 AM

Re mpowell

"I guess you attack the critics that you can, but this is hardly a stirring defense of bombing civilians."

You mean like the US and Britain did in World War 2 against Germany and Japan?

Posted by SLC | October 25, 2007 12:38 PM

I wish, at least once, when Rice or someone else pulls that "I don't remember" crap, that the questioner reminds the witness that he/she is under oath, that an assertion of lack of memory could be a violation of that oath, and then asks the question again.

Also, Rice should be prevented from filibustering. When she has a hostile questioner who has a 10-minute slot, she tries to drag out the answer to a basic yes-or-no question to eight minutes or more.

Posted by Joe Buck | October 25, 2007 12:43 PM

"I guess you attack the critics that you can, but this is hardly a stirring defense of bombing civilians."

You mean like the US and Britain did in World War 2 against Germany and Japan?

Its fairly certain that in the course of reading a liberal blog post criticizing Bush administration officials, you're going to encounter criticism of their handling of the IDF actions in Lebanon and implicit criticism of those actions directly. Maybe you think those actions are justified. Most people around here probably feel they are among the least justifiable of recent Israeli policy. It certainly been debated extensively. But it is interesting that on an unrelated post you cannot let such criticism pass without responding with, first, an ad hominem attack and, secondly, a banal historical reference. One wonders, what is the point here? Do you expect to convince anyone with such observations? Or is establishing the point that no such criticism, anywhere, may go unanswered (even if in form only) worth poisoning the discussion on any other subject?

Posted by mpowell | October 25, 2007 2:57 PM

Excellent rejoinder, mpowell. I don't need to say more.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 26, 2007 12:47 AM