Reply #13: Does anyone know more about that "memorable exchange" between

[54anickel]

Rice and Rummy mentioned in the article? Rummy is obviously ticked that the Iraq Reconstruction has been taken away from him and given to Rice, but there's got to be more to it.

snip>

...Lawmakers could recall no sharp exchanges involving the president, but there was a memorable exchange between Rice and Rumsfeld at a meeting with House Democrats.

After the presentations, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and others complained that the State Department does not have enough people on the ground to guide reconstruction and political development. Rice said she was trying to do this with volunteers but was bound by labor rules that limit stays to 90 days.

"Everybody in the room was kind of pounding on her," according to a participant. "She said, 'I don't have the authority to order these people over.' Then Rumsfeld said, 'Yes, you do.' Then she said, 'Don, let's not get into this right now.' "




I certainly don't trust what's been going on. It seems they are setting up some sort of good/bad cop scenario where Cheney and Rummy are the bad guys. But how does Rice fit in? She was defending and denying Cheney's stance on torture overseas. Then McCain supposedly has this empty victory in banning torture with W trying to give the appearance of siding with McCain's point of view all along. None of this is passing the smell test, but what are they really up to here? McCain is looking like presidential material, Cheney and Rummy are looking like evil voices in Shrub's head, and Shrub is looking like he's taking over the reins of his administration while defending and legitimizing his pre-emptive war stance.



Here's an interesting point of view on the McCain anti-torture proposition:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/tort-d17.shtm...

The agreement reached between the Bush White House and Senator John McCain on a measure ostensibly banning torture does nothing of the kind. The official disavowal of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of alleged terrorists held by the US is a ploy to cover up Washington’s past defiance of international laws banning torture and provide a pseudo-legal cover for the continuation of the same methods.

The very fact that the US government is obliged to make a public disavowal of torture is a damning indictment of Washington’s lawless methods. The whole world knows that the US is employing torture and other illegal means, including abductions, secret prisons, imprisonment without charge or legal recourse, in the name of its global “war on terror.”

The agreement reached between the White House and McCain—a right-wing Republican senator and fervent supporter of the war in Iraq—is in the form of an amendment to the appropriations bill for the Department of Defense. The amendment, as agreed on by the White House and the senator, requires that the US military treat those detained by it in accordance with the Army Field Manual. It adds that no prisoner “in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”

snip>

The real position of McCain and other congressional backers of his amendment is that such open sanction for torture is politically and militarily inexpedient. McCain is well aware that the US and forces trained and financed by Washington have long engaged in such methods, most notoriously in Latin America and Vietnam. Their basic position can be summed up as: do it, but don’t talk about it.

McCain, a Vietnam-era navy pilot who was held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, is close to sections of the military brass. He speaks for those in the military, and the ruling elite more generally, who consider the open defense of detainee abuse to be highly damaging to the interests of American imperialism, including the struggle to crush the insurgency in Iraq and prepare future military interventions elsewhere.

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