"Condi Rice's Tortured Macaca Moment"

Ari Melber:

Asked about her role advancing torture during the Bush administration in a meeting with college students, Rice claimed that no torture occurred in Guantanamo (false); Al Qaeda poses a greater threat than the axis in World War II (dubious); and -- this was big -- the President can make an act legal by authorizing it (official Frost/Nixon alert).

Along the way, Rice also berated one college student, chiding him to "do your homework first" and read a report supporting her views -- an exchange that was unbecoming and uncomfortable to watch.

Harpers' Scott Horton already demolished Rice's arguments, so I won't repeat his points here. But this incident also shows the prospects for what we might call a substantive Macaca Moment - using YouTube and citizen media to scrutinize our leaders on the issues, not gaffes.

The riveting video of Rice was a collaborative citizen project, from start to finish. Stanford students Jeremy Cohn and Sammy Abusrur asked Rice the intelligent, pointed questions that drew such revealing responses, while their classmate Reyna Garcia shot the video and uploaded it to YouTube. Garcia is no-nonsense. She simply titled the video "Condoleeza Rice meets with some students," instructed visitors to "keep comments civil," and announced that "all rights to this video belong to me, Reyna Garcia."

The seven-minute clip quickly drew 150,000 views, shot up to the top of Rice videos on YouTube, and jumpstarted traditional media coverage. Blogs pounced. Law professor Jack Balkin, who runs an influential legal blog, banged out a quick analysis of the claim that an act isn't torture if "Bush ordered it." The Washington Post ran an item about how the "riled" former secretary of state was "caught on tape" giving a "finger-wagging" torture defense to students. Online radio host Cenk Uyger picked up the clip with a YouTube commentary, "Condi Rice Pulls a Nixon," that drew over 100,000 views. The next day, Keith Olbermann devoted a segment to broadcasting and discussing Garcia's video on MSNBC.

Watching the video, however, it is striking to contrast how this civil, mildly persistent questioning from college students generated more pressure - and answers - than many of the professional television interviews Rice has done. Scott Horton also flagged this dynamic:

For eight years, Condoleezza Rice dealt with the Beltway punditry and the access-craving White House press corps. The reception she got, with a handful of exceptions, was fawning. Which leaves her totally unprepared for a return to an academy populated with the Daily Show generation: bright young minds with a very critical attitude towards the last eight years.

It would have barely mattered, of course, if the audience were limited to the few people physically present in that classroom. But this generation knows how to ask questions and get the word out. For government officials who oversaw war crimes, that could make life outside of Washington a little more trying.

Countdown: "Rice's tortured excuse" (video)

MSNBC-Countdown: Keith Olbermann rips Condi's torture lies to shreds with the assistance of ex-Nixon aide, John Dean, video (07:21). Dean suggests that Obama may be at risk for prosecution himself if he doesn't proceed with prosecution, based on international law.

"Did Rice Just Implicate Bush For Torture?" (video)

Spencer Ackerman (firedoglake), with video (07:14):

Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and secretary of state to George W. Bush, put on something of a torture-and-responsibility clinic to a student at Stanford University. Annie Lowrey at Foreign Policy does the hard work of transcribing, so I can simply cut-n-paste Rice's recollection of her July 2002 approval of the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah:

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 authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency. That they had policy authorization subject to the Justice Department's clearance. That's what I did....

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 authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture.

My emphasis. I had intended to stop this post with a notation of Rice's rather Nixonian overtones --"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal" -- but it appears Rice has actually made some news here. Until now, Rice has been the seniormost Bush administration official known to have signed off on waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" methods for Abu Zubaydah. In an April 2008 interview with ABC News, Bush said that he knew that his top advisers had met to discuss what was acceptable for the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah in the spring of 2002, but acknowledged merely that he "approved" of such meetings, but gave no indication that he specifically signed off on the interrogation plan.

But Rice is now portraying herself as merely being a conduit for approving the CIA's interrogation regime: "I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency." Well, there are only two more-senior officials than Rice in this context, and that's Bush and then-VP Dick Cheney. If she hadn't made a decision on the part of the administration for the Abu Zubaydah interrogation plan, only one of these two men would have had the authority to do so. And all of this would have happened before the Justice Department determined the interrogation techniques to be legal.

Howie P.S.: Condi is a condescending liar. It was gratifying to hear the suppressed rage in her voice. She's feeling the heat.