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Rumsfeld to Bush: "I Don't Do Detainees"

Condoleeza Rice has written a 734 page memoir of her time in the Bush Administration (first as National Security Adviser and then as Secretary of State.) The New York Times has an advance copy. It says she recounts her clashes with Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and Rumsfeld. Rice describes the meeting with Cheney and Bush where Bush decided to move Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from an overseas secret prison to Guantanamo. As to Rumsfeld:

Ms. Rice writes that he tried to avoid such issues, at one point marching out of a meeting and saying, “I don’t do detainees.” [More...]

I wonder how Rice will portray her role in Ghost Air. Especially with respect to the detainees who were held and tortured only to later be freed because they were victims of misidentification. Like German shoe salesman Khalid al-Masri. After being plucked off the street in Macedonia while on vacation,

[Al-Masri was ]flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh'."

It was Rice who, after five months in CIA detention at an overseas prison, ordered him freed, which showed the White House was deeply involved in the CIA rendition and detention program. As the New York Times said:

Ms. Rice's involvement suggests that the White House may have played a more hands-on role than was previously known. The officials who discussed the matter on Friday suggested that she had intervened as needed, but would not describe the extent to which national security officials at the White House were in charge.

Officials said al-Masri was a case of misidentification:

Authorities believed he was a member of Al Qaeda who had trained at one of Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. But within several months they concluded he was the victim of mistaken identity, the officials said. His name was similar to a Qaeda suspect on an international watch list of possible terrorist operatives, they said.

Al-Masri's later lawsuit against George Tenet and others was dismissed on the basis of the state secrets privilege, a ruling the 4th Circuit upheld.

The Times reports Rice does express some regrets in her book:

Ms. Rice offers several regrets. The way Mr. Bush rejected the Kyoto climate change treaty without promising to seek alternatives was a “self-inflicted wound,” she concludes, while her New York shopping trip during Hurricane Katrina was “tone deaf” for the nation’s highest-ranking African-American.
That shopping trip would have been tone-deaf for any official.
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  • Display: Sort:
    Shameful. Anyone who has ever (5.00 / 1) (#1)
    by oculus on Sun Oct 23, 2011 at 12:57:20 PM EST
    worked in or studied the criminal justice system in U.S. knows id based solely on "name" is insufficient.  

    Bah... (5.00 / 1) (#6)
    by desertswine on Sun Oct 23, 2011 at 10:32:27 PM EST
    A 734 page fairy tale, I'm sure.  Just like Bush's book, Rumsfeld's book, and Cheney's book.  I won't even have to remind myself not to read this one.

    Have you read Obama's books? What (5.00 / 1) (#14)
    by oculus on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 12:56:51 PM EST
    did you think of them?

    Parent
    Subtitle ought to read: (5.00 / 1) (#8)
    by BobTinKY on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 07:20:10 AM EST
    How My Incompetence was No Match for Evil.

    So...Condi Rice writes a book. (5.00 / 1) (#9)
    by Anne on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 09:05:28 AM EST
    And some publisher is paying her a ton of money for it.  And I guess she'll be all over the TV, talking about it.  The usual media types will gush over it, and her.  

    Pardon me while I throw up.

    This woman was part of a corrupt, deceptive, manipulative administration, and shares responsibility for the mangling of the Constitution and the looting of our Treasury to pay for wars that didn't need to be waged, and equally responsible for the lives lost, the lives forever damaged, the families that will never be the same,  in service to their lies.  Lies which she and the others continue to tell even today.  

    Seriously, I don't think there's anything she has to offer, in the book or now, that holds one scintilla of interest to me.  Unless she wanted to surrender herself to authorities, tell the truth if she knows how, and be responsible for providing enough evidence to convict her bosses and the rest of those who designed and executed what was perpetrated on this country.

    That, I could be interested in.


    Self-mutilation and tin ears (none / 0) (#2)
    by Dadler on Sun Oct 23, 2011 at 01:05:18 PM EST
    Methinks the former secretary will, somehow, through astonishing feats of intellectual might, manage to be a bit more kind to herself in this memoir than either of those two mentioned political "afflictions" seem to indicate.

    Tone deaf is one of those expressions intended to make much more ingrained dysfunction seem merely like a poor choice of hosiery that day.  "Oh, she just woke up on the wrong side of her closet."

    But it's not like she didn't have her rabid fans.  The story about Gaddafi, apparently, having quite a weird thing for her, well, you really don't need to add anything to that one, it's just too perfectly freakish on its own.

    Let's remember (5.00 / 2) (#3)
    by scribe on Sun Oct 23, 2011 at 02:59:21 PM EST
    it was not just a shoe-shopping trip.

    She did go to Ferragamo (where other patrons started raising a ruckus b/c she was blowing off her job when other countries were offering Katrina aid) and bought some boots or heels (I forget exactly which) before management suggested she might want to move along.  Then she went to Spamalot on Broadway, where oher theatergoers made a bit of a ruckus b/c she was blowing off her job when other countries were offering Katrina aid.  And then she made soulless comments blowing off other countries' offers of Katrina aid, when she finally got around to checking messages.

    And I think she went out for dinner, too, while blowing off her job and ignoring other countries' offers of Katrina aid.

    Parent

    Just curious (none / 0) (#10)
    by jimakaPPJ on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 10:27:23 AM EST
    Besides a very strong dislike for anyone Republican, can anyone explain why Condi's actions are so bothersome??

    I mean she wasn't the President or the head of FEMA, so what's the problem??

    Parent

    I wondered about that too. When did (5.00 / 1) (#13)
    by oculus on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 12:55:42 PM EST
    Secretary of State become responsible for hurricane damage w/i U.S.?  

    Parent
    I could (none / 0) (#11)
    by sj on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 11:28:02 AM EST
    but I don't see any reason why I should give you a place to hijack another thread.

    Parent
    sj, Slow Day so I Will Amuze the Man (none / 0) (#12)
    by ScottW714 on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 11:36:43 AM EST
    It's not a dislike of republicans, it's a dislike of BS, which if you would stop and really pay attention, has been quite focused on democrats lately.

    And to be quite frank, the fact that none of these idiots can even get their own lies straight for books, is complete and utter BS.  Which as mentioned above, is the real dislike here.

    Parent

    Hmmmmm (none / 0) (#15)
    by jimakaPPJ on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 01:01:08 PM EST
    Well, I read what you wrote, but it doesn't answer the question.

    Why should anyone be upset over her specific actions?? Katrina wasn't her job.

    I'll answer my own question.

    She is a black female who didn't stay on the reservation. As such she must be punished.

    Parent

    And the sun is the sole (none / 0) (#16)
    by jondee on Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 01:07:35 PM EST
    cause of the greenhouse effect, and Barney Frank caused the financial crisis etc etc

    Parent
    Oh, speaking of Gaddafi's fascination (5.00 / 1) (#4)
    by Zorba on Sun Oct 23, 2011 at 03:26:46 PM EST
    with Rice (and wasn't that very, very strange?), the other day I heard  a little haiku (on, of all things, the Tony Kornheiser show on ESPN radio).  One listener emailed this (credit listener Chad, or Shad, I can't remember, and I hope I have the haiku at least close to its original):

           Gaddafi is dead
           It means Condoleeza Rice
           Lost a Facebook friend.

    Ouch!  (Okay, I must admit, I laughed.  Shame on me!)

    Parent

    Rummy and Condi (none / 0) (#5)
    by Daniel on Sun Oct 23, 2011 at 05:42:42 PM EST
    You know, I have so little sympathy with Condoleeza Rice, that I find myself having to pay attention when she's in conflict with Rumsfeld or Cheney. Gonzalez was and is a slimeball lawyer toady of the far right and was not intellectually fit to hold the office he was chosen for by CHeney et al.
    But when Condi talks about pursuing diplomacy instead of military efforts favored by Rumsfeld and Cheney, let's not forget Richard Clarke's pleas to her before 911 that he had information etc that she completely surpressed and never let see the light of day. The effect of that was not only attack on the US, but military intervention, and in a country that never posed a threat to us.

    Obama also doesn't "do detainees" (none / 0) (#7)
    by abdiel on Sun Oct 23, 2011 at 11:48:34 PM EST
    given the drastic increase in drone strikes and hit missions rather than high-profile captures.