Slick

by digby

Following on of dday’s post yesterday about Colin Powell’s interview with Maddow, C&L now has up the transcript of the exchange on torture. It’s worth looking at in print, to parse his actual words:

RACHEL: On the issue of intelligence—tainted evidence and those things—were you ever present at meetings at which the interrogation of prisoners, like Abu Zubaida, other prisoners in those early days, where the interrogation was directed? Where specific interrogation techniques were approved. It has been reported on a couple of different sources that there were Principals Meetings, which you would have typically been there, where interrogations were almost play-by-play discussed.

POWELL: They were not play-by-play discussed but there were conversations at a senior level as to what could be done with respect to interrogation. I cannot go further because I don’t have knowledge of all the meetings that took place or what was discussed at each of those meetings and I think it’s going to have to be the written record of those meetings that will determine whether anything improper took place.

But it was always the case that, at least from the State Department’s standpoint, we should be consistent with the requirements of the Geneva Convention. And that’s why this was such a controversial, controversial issue. But you’ll have to go, and in due course I think we all will go, to the written record of what memos were signed. I’m not sure what memos were signed or not signed. I didn’t have access to all of that information.

MADDOW: If there was a meeting, though, at which senior officials were saying, were discussing and giving the approval for sleep deprivation, stress positions, water boarding, were those officials committing crimes when they were giving that authorization?

POWELL: You’re asking me a legal question. I mean I don’t know that any of these items would be considered criminal. And I will wait for whatever investigations that the government or the Congress intends to pursue with this.

MADDOW: There have been two Bush administration officials now who have said explicitly that what we did at Guantanamo was torture. One of them was the State Department general counsel for Guantanamo litigation, a man named Vijay—excuse me—Padmanabhan.

POWELL: I don’t know him.

MADDOW: Also Susan Crawford, who heads up the military tribunals at Guantanamo. Both have said it was torture. Do you think that they are wrong? Do you feel like you have enough information to know if people were waterboarded? Is that torture?

POWELL: I will let those who are making the legal determination of that make that judgment. Susan Crawford has made a statement and she is in a position of authority to make such a statement, has access to all of the information. The lawyer you mentioned who is working in, I guess, the legal advisor’s office in the State Department, but I don’t believe I know him, has made statements recently. What’s the basis for his statements and what meetings he was in and whether he was in Guantanamo, I just don’t know.

MADDOW: I guess have to ask that—just a broader question about whether or not you have regrets, not about what the Bush administration did broadly in the years that you were Secretary of State, but the decisions that you participated in about interrogation, about torture, about the other things.

POWELL: We had no meetings on torture. It’s constantly said that the meetings—I had an issue with this—we had meetings on what torture to administer. What I recall, the meetings I was in—I was not in all of the meetings and I was not an author of many of the memos that have been written (and some have come out, some have not come out). The only meetings I recall were where we talked about what is it we can do with respect to trying to get information from individuals who were in our custody. And I will just have to wait until the full written record is available and has been examined.

MADDOW: I don’t mean to press you on this to the point of discomfort but there is an extent to which there is a legal discussion around this where everybody feels a little constrained by the legal terms and whether or not they are a legal professional. There is also the policy implications that you’ve been so eloquent about, in terms of what the implications are of these policies for the U.S. abroad in a continuing way. And you’ve been very optimistic in thinking that America still has a reservoir of good will around the world that we can call on regardless of these difficulties that we’ve had around these issues.

If specific interrogation techniques were being approved by people at the political level in the Cabinet, it doesn’t—the legal niceties of it almost become less important.

POWELL: I don’t know where these things were being approved at a political level.

MADDOW: If there was a Principals Meeting at the White House to discuss interrogation techniques?

POWELL: It does not mean it was approved, anything was approved, at a meeting.

MADDOW: OK.

POWELL: It depends on did the meeting end up in a conclusion or was it just a briefing that then went to others to make a final decision on and to document. And so it is a legal issue and I think we have to be very careful and I have to be very careful because I don’t want to be seen as implicating anybody or accusing anybody because I don’t have the complete record on this. And that complete record I think in due course will come out.

Now Powell is saying that he can’t make a judgment about this because he wasn’t in all of the meetings. Of course, he could talk about the meeting in which he did participate, but he won’t. And then he retreats into excuses about legality and says he doesn’t want to implicate anyone else. Very, very slick. But he does say one thing that’s worth noting. He says the White house principals groups didn’t make the final decisions, which indicates that the decisions went all the way to the president. After all, Junior was the only “White House principal” who wasn’t in those meetings.

And like everyone from Cheney to Bush to Obama when he insists on using that awkward locution “America doesn’t torture” no matter what the question, he insults our intelligence with comments like this:

We had no meetings on torture. It’s constantly said that the meetings—I had an issue with this—we had meetings on what torture to administer. What I recall, the meetings I was in—I was not in all of the meetings and I was not an author of many of the memos that have been written (and some have come out, some have not come out). The only meetings I recall were where we talked about what is it we can do with respect to trying to get information from individuals who were in our custody.

It’s infuriating. They had no meetings on torture, only on “what is is we can do with respect to trying to get information from individuals who were in our custody.” Which was a discussion of techniques that any sentient being considers torture! And, in fact, it has been reported in more than one account that they actually had CIA people acting out the torture techniques for the White House principals.

As for Powell’s insistence that a complete record will come out in due course — why would that be? There are no official inquiries, no investigations, no hearings, no nothing. As a result, the “complete record” will undoubtedly be competing narratives of events and it will never be adequately settled. Nobody will be held responsible and our society will never have a “ruling” on the definition of torture and whether or not we prohibit it. And that’s pretty disturbing since torture was considered a taboo for many years prior to this recent decent into barbarity.

Colin Powell can pretend that he isn’t responsible because he didn’t make the “final” decision all he wants. But if he sat in meetings when they were discussing what any decent human being would describe as torture, and went along with it, then he’s as guilty as the rest. But then Powell has quite a history of involvement with barbaric acts, doesn’t he?