I know, I’m harping on it, but so did Dubya: it’s that Clintonian method of bending words to fit what you mean. Bush used Clinton’s rather pathetic attempts to parse his way out of trouble as ammunition during the 2000 campaign (even though Clinton was not his opponent) and he pledged to restore honesty to the White House.
Yeah, right.
In the spirit of “depends what ‘is’ means,” the Bush administration claims that there was no violation of rules against torture simply because it changed what the rules mean.
And now, MSNBC reports that Rumsfeld didn’t violate any laws when he ordered a prisoner to be hidden from the Red Cross… because it depends how you interpret the law.
Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held “off the books” — hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else — in possible violation of international law.
It’s the first direct link between Rumsfeld and questionable though not violent treatment of prisoners in Iraq.
The Iraqi prisoner was captured last July as deadly attacks on U.S. troops began to rise. He was identified as a member of the terrorist group Ansar al Islam, suspected in the attacks on coalition forces.
Shortly after the suspect’s capture, the CIA flew him to an undisclosed location outside Iraq for interrogation. But four months later the Justice Department suggested that holding him outside Iraq might be illegal, and the prisoner was returned to Iraq at the end of October.
That’s when Rumsfeld passed the order on to Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, to keep the prisoner locked up, but off the books.
I’m not going to dispute how bad this prisoner might be, how culpable he might be for terrorist acts, or how deserving he might be of his treatment.
But i’m so tired of the Bush administration claiming that they hold the high road when it comes to morals and “changing the tone.”
I guess they’re realizing it as well. After all, Bush had nothing but praise for Bill Clinton earlier this week at the White House…
