Last Straw

Check out this video of war crim­inal Con­doleezza Rice passing the buck when ques­tioned by some stu­dents about torture.

Stu­dent: Water­board­ing. Is water­board­ing torture?

War crim: Er, the Pres­id­ent instruc­ted us that noth­ing we would do would be out­side of our oblig­a­tions, legal oblig­a­tions, under the Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture. So that’s … and by the way, I didn’t author­ise any­thing. I con­veyed the author­isa­tion of the admin­is­tra­tion to the agency, that they had policy author­isa­tion, sub­ject to the Justice Department’s clear­ance. That’s what I did.

So, first, denial but it gets bet­ter. I couldn’t quite get the next ques­tion but this is her answer:

War crim: … and, I just said, the United States was told, we were told, noth­ing that viol­ates our oblig­a­tions under the Con­ven­tion Against Tor­ture, and so by defin­i­tion, if it was author­ised by the pres­id­ent, it did not viol­ate our oblig­a­tions under the Con­ven­tion Against Torture.

That old chest­nut. “Well he told me to do it, and fur­ther­more, he’s above the law.” We’ll see Condi, we’ll see.