sad measure of how badly Bush admin. has damaged its moral standing...

[dajoki]

NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/opinion/07wed1.html?th&emc=th

Secretary Rice's Rendition

Published: December 7, 2005

It was a sad enough measure of how badly the Bush administration has damaged its moral standing that the secretary of state had to deny that the president condones torture before she could visit some of the most reliable American allies in Europe. It was even worse that she had a hard time sounding credible when she did it.

Of course, it would have helped if Condoleezza Rice was actually in a position to convince the world that the United States has not, does not and will not torture prisoners. But there's just too much evidence that this has happened at the hands of American interrogators or their proxies in other countries. Vice President Dick Cheney is still lobbying to legalize torture at the C.I.A.'s secret prisons, and to block a law that would reimpose on military prisons the decades-old standard of decent treatment that Mr. Bush scrapped after 9/11.

Pesky facts keep getting in the way of Ms. Rice's message. Yesterday, the new German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that Ms. Rice had acknowledged privately that the United States should not have abducted a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who says he was sent to Afghanistan and mistreated for five months before the Americans realized that they had the wrong man and let him go.

Mr. Masri tried to appear at a press conference in Washington yesterday to discuss a lawsuit filed in Virginia on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union, a suit alleging wrongful imprisonment and torture - but the United States government has refused to allow him into the country.

[sojourner]

1. hmm...and we don't have foreign correspondents who can meet with this guy?

[dajoki]

2. more info on case...

village voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0549,ridgeway,70793,2.html


El-Masri's case appears to have been a clear mistake. Reports Newsday:

The CIA inspector general is investigating a growing number of what it calls "erroneous renditions," according to former and current intelligence officials. One official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others say it is fewer. One turned out to be an innocent professor offered up by an al-Qaida member who had been given a bad grade, one official said.
While the CIA admitted to Germany's then-interior minister, Schily, that it erred, it has labored to keep quiet the case specifics. Al-Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al-Qaida unit "believed he was someone else," one former CIA official said.

[sojourner]

3. thanks for the link...

I've been tuned in to the story. Just think it odd that the US Gov't can so easily forestall his story getting into the media. You'd think the media could fly someone over to interview him, is all I'm saying.

But then that would take an independent media, interested in truth, wouldn't it... (sigh)

[dajoki]

4. yes it would...

but we do have correspondents around the world, problem is this story is probably not "sensational" enough for them. oh, and making this admin. look bad doesn't help either.