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.