Love This Headline: Condoleezza Rice Gave Nod For 'Torture' Techniques

[tekisui]

Source: Times Online

A Senate Intelligence Committee document has revealed that Condoleezza Rice personally approved the CIA’s use of waterboarding on al-Qaeda suspects.

The new narrative provides the most detailed timeline yet of the conception and top-level approval of the violent “enhanced interrogation” techniques employed by American officials.

The report describes a meeting between then-CIA Director George Tenet and Dr Rice in July 2002. The Secretary of State "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation" of alleged al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah, the report said.

In 2003, the CIA briefed Dr Rice, Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, on the use of waterboarding and other methods including week-long sleep deprivation, forced nudity and the use of stress positions. The Senate report says that officials "reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy".

CIA memos released by President Obama's administration last week revealed that Mr Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in the course of a month, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who claimed to have planned the September 11 attacks, 183 times.

The new timeline shows that Dr Rice played a greater role in the acceptance of harsh interrogation techniques than she admitted last autumn in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods were repeatedly brushed aside.

The Intelligence Committee’s timeline comes a day after the Senate Armed Services Committee released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the CIA’s harsh interrogation programme and abuses of prisoners at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Last Autumn, Dr Rice acknowledged to the Senate Armed Services Committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed, and asked for the attorney general to conduct a legal review. She said that she did not recall the details. Dr Rice omitted her direct role in approving the programme in her written statement to the committee.

more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6154255.ece

[havocmom]

1. Conndoleezza 'Any Means to an End' Rice from now on. More evidence: anything to get the war on.

Any method to get 'intel' to connect al-Qaeda to Iraq, up to and including war crimes, eh, Dr. (Strange)Rice?

LIHOP/MIHOP looking less tin-foil-y all the time.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Yes, I'm sure Condi was the mastermind behind it all.

:sarcasm:

[tekisui]

3. No, but we are getting closer.....

[TwilightGardener]

5. My snark wasn't directed at you, BTW, but at the obvious direction

the blame (shit) will roll--always downhill. My impression is that Condi didn't know what she was doing in her NSA role, and just greenlighted the agenda provided her. Not that that makes her immune from culpability, but really...does anyone think she had anything on her mind at the time other than pleasing her "husband"?

[predfan]

4. One wonders if that was the only time Condi "gave nod" in the WH