"Many words, little clarity from Rice," writes the WaPo's Eugene Robinson:

... When Rice was in Kiev, Ukraine, the other day, I thought I heard her say that the United States government has never tortured people we suspect of being terrorists -- How could anyone even think such a thing? -- or maybe she said that, in any event, we promise to stop doing this awful thing we've never done.

The secretary of state pledged that we wouldn't inflict "cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment" on anyone, even foreign nationals on foreign soil. But was she doing to the words "cruel, inhumane and degrading" what Bill Clinton did to the word "is"? And did this new policy apply not only to U.S. personnel but also to civilian contractors working for the military or the CIA? Just as I was starting to get lost in the tall weeds of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the White House helpfully explained that Rice's comments didn't represent a change of policy at all.

Glad we cleared that up.

Earlier in her trip I'm sure I heard Rice say that we would continue abducting terrorist suspects and making them vanish into months or years of secret detention. She didn't want to talk much about those clandestine "black site" CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, which of course don't exist, depending on what the meaning of the word "exist" is. I'm pretty sure I heard her say we still reserve the right to hold people in these nonexistent prisons as long as we want, without charges or due process. ...

What Robinson is saying politely is that Rice is a liar -- and not a very good one. She didn't make the policy, but she chooses to work for an administration that has a torture policy that even its most articulate representatives can't define or defend in public for more than two days. Seriously, when is the last time a US Secretary of State got such bad publicity on a trip abroad? I am having trouble remembering another one.

Posted by Laura at December 8, 2005 11:55 PM