Evolved in the context of democracy

A few quotes from Condi Rice. I have no clever remarks about them, unless shouting “bullshit” counts as a clever remark.

At Google hq yesterday, Condi Rice responded in a Q&A session (for which there seems to be no transcript) to a question about waterboarding, in light of the newly disclosed information that after 9/11 she personally approved of specific torture techniques: “whatever was legal in the face of not just the attacks of Sept. 11, but the anthrax attacks that happened, we were in an environment in which saving America from the next attack was paramount”. As opposed to following the law, I think she’s saying. But, she went on, there has been a “long evolution in American policy about detainees and about interrogations” since then: “They have evolved in the context of democracy, they have evolved in the context of the constant debate about our values... I think that we are now in a different place now then we were.”

She went on to defend the torture as having produced good intel about Al Qaida.


After the Google event, she talked with reporters, and said, “I think in terms of human rights, we’ve done everything that we can to make Guantanamo a place that human rights are respected.” Really, everything they can. They can’t think of a single solitary thing they could do to make Gitmo a place that human rights are respected that they aren’t already doing.