Appalled at Condoleezza Rice's dissembling and dishonest assertions

I am personally very appalled at U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's comments on Tuesday which refused to acknolwedge the obvious facts and talked as if the U.S. was not in any way involved in activities that everybody knows that the U.S. has been deeply involved in with regard to the handling of suspects in the "war on terror".

Serious questions have been raised and her trip was supposedly intended to address the concerns that raised those questions. She basically refused to directly address the questions and made statements that were either outright lies or at least depended on absurd interpretations of even simple English words.

According to the New York Times, she said "the United States does not condone torture." Of course we know that the administration has its own interpretation of which constitutes "torture" and we can only imagine what tortured meaning the administration gives to the word "condone".

The Times also quotes her as saying that "It is against U.S. law to be involved in torture or conspiracy to commit torture," but that begs the question of whether agents of the U.S. have *violated* U.S. law as well as how the administration interprets the meaning of "involved" and what exactly would constitute a "conspiracy". Besides, we already know they interpret the word "torture" in a way the defies common sense, if not international law.

What I would prefer to hear is that the U.S. will not engage in "harsh treatment" of persons under its control nor "aid and abet" others in engaging in "harsh treatment."

The bottom line is that Ms. Rice has *refused* to acknowledge the truth that is available to all of us and *refused* to hold out a standard to the world that citizens everywhere can look to as being fair and respectful of human rights.

-- Jack Krupansky