Good 'ole Nixon logic

You have to admire the stones on some of the Bush Administration people. Take Condi Rice, who had a large role in approving torture. Now that the info has come out, instead of just saying it was wrong and plowing forward with some dissembling bullshit about "mistakes being made" she not only wants to pretend it isn't torture, pretend she didn't help authorize it, but also break out Nixonian logic to defend it.

Q: Is waterboarding torture?

RICE: 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.

Q: Okay. Is waterboarding torture in your opinion?

RICE: 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 authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

So because the President said it wasn't outside the CAT, nothing that happened was outside the CAT. Because of the simple fact the President authorized it means it couldn't have been torture. Anyway it isn't even her fault, so go away. Condi, Condi, Condi, not the best defense. That's the kind of line that made David Frost chortle in disbelief when Nixon said it in all those Frost/Nixon trailers. Bush can't magically declare something legal, not even if he wiggles his nose, waves a wand over the authorization, or recites some phrase he half remembered from a Harry Potter book.

I'm surprised all it took was a couple of students from Stanford to break you down into a quivering ball of incoherent justifications. If a couple of buzzed freshmen can do it, how easy is it going to be for the Spanish courts?