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December 13, 2005
Fabulous Fumble of the Week, Dec. 13 - Condi Rice
This weeks Fabulous Fumble award goes to Secretary of State Condi Rice for her comments in Europe regarding U.S. torture policy. Given all the factual evidence of U.S. torture tactics, she tried to deny that the U.S. uses torture, she said that the government might have made some mistakes in the past, but that it was no longer grabbing terrorist suspects and flying them to undisclosed locations for the purposes of torture.
Rice has refused to answer directly whether the United States keeps terrorist suspects in detention centers that violate European legal and human rights guarantees. She assured German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday that the United States would work to rectify any mistakes it has made in its war on terror.
Reports of secret prisons have roiled Europe for a month. Rice has asserted that the United States acts within the law and tried to argue that the Europeans are safer because of tough U.S. tactics.
The BBC reports:
Ms Rice's first stop is Germany, where parliament has demanded to know the purpose of more than 400 flights, run by the US military, that landed or passed through German airspace.
She will also visit Romania - where human rights groups allege a detention centre may have been located - and Brussels.
On Monday, human rights group Amnesty International said that six planes used by the CIA for renditions had made 800 flights in EU airspace, including 50 landings at Shannon airport in the Republic of Ireland.
Ms Rice told Ireland last week that Shannon airport had not been used for "anything untoward".
In some ways she is in a no win situation. She can't admit that the U.S. tortures prisoners, and she doesn't want to admit that the U.S. has secret detention facilities spread throughout the world. Flat denials only create added problems for an administration that has lost almost all credibility. The White House has to find a new strategy if it is to regain any support from the American public, otherwise it is doomed to more embarrassing losses.
Posted by Chip Spear at December 13, 2005 8:40 AM
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