Why Is Condi Still Around?
by Steve Soto
Earlier this week, the NYT ran a series of stories documenting high-level disagreements within the Bush Administration over the illegal detainee interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay. The NYT reported as does the Post that the FBI raised its concerns over the illegality and usefulness of these methods all the way through the bureau and Attorney General John Ashcroft into the White House and the National Security Council, managed at the time by one Condi Rice.
This debate started as far back as 2002, and yet Bush/Cheney sided with the likes of John Yoo and David Addington over the entire bureau and senior DOJ officials, approving techniques that have since compromised future prosecutions and yielded questionable at best intelligence. In fact, the Post reports that the Bush Administration’s case against suspected terrorists in custody are now in doubt, just as the FBI predicted six years ago.
Yes, I can understand the debate between those who were scared and taking the short view at the time that the president had ultimate authority to do whatever he wanted to prevent another attack by committing war crimes against detainees (Yoo and Addington, ultimately Cheney and Bush); and those who felt that a longer view was imperative, one which didn’t erode our moral and legal standing but which still protected us (the FBI and DOJ). But the other troubling issue here is that FBI director Robert Mueller has sat in that job for six years after being ignored on a major issue like this, one in which his own senior staff risked their careers to speak out against these illegalities in a time of war hysteria, and yet Mueller sleeps at night, collecting his paycheck.
And then there is Condi Rice, who sat there and heard this debate, did nothing of consequence when senior DOJ attorneys and the bureau stuck their necks out as far back as 2003, whereupon she lied to Congress several times about her knowledge of all this in order to get and maintain her new job as the most worthless Secretary of State in modern times.
Yet we’ve heard nothing from Joe Biden at Senate Foreign Relations, Pat Leahy at Senate Judiciary, or Jay Rockefeller at Senate Intelligence Committees about dragging her ass to a hearing to explain why she shouldn’t be impeached.
Go figure.