Condi Rice to World: We Are the Torturers and Mighty Proud of It

Berlin may be my favorite city on earth, and it just galls me that Condoleezza Rice is not persona non grata there as a principal liar and handmaiden to war crimes for the Bush administration. She's appearing in Europe essentially to bully the Europeans into keeping quiet about our torture policies lest they lose our "protection" for them in the overhyped and underplayed "war on terror."

European governments have expressed outrage over reports of a network of secret Soviet-era prisons in Eastern Europe where detainees may have been harshly treated and reports of CIA flights carrying al-Qaida prisoners through European airports.

Several countries have denied they hosted such sites. If the United States did operate such prisons, or is still doing so, the information would be classified. The Bush administration has refused to answer questions about it in public.

"Were I to confirm or deny, say yes or say no, then I would be compromising intelligence information, and I'm not going to do that," Rice told reporters on her plane to Germany. Before leaving Washington, Rice told reporters that fighting terrorism is "a two-way street" and that Europeans are safer for tough but legal U.S. tactics.

If there are any Europeans reading this, I'd like to know your views on whether or not you're safer because my country is now cheerfully and energetically engaged in cruel, inhumane, and degrading practices for interrogation to the point that even language in a Senate bill outlawing such practices is grounds for Chimpie's first veto of his entire administration. And don't forget Dick Cheney's sexually charged defense of the practice. I know it's harder to get it up when you're married to Lynn and have heart trouble, but having innocent people beaten, shocked, chained to the floor in their own feces and forced to perform homosexual acts for the camera is a kind of pornography he should be shy of admiring in public.

You see, these war criminals don't deny such charges against them; rather, they seek to reclassify torture and unprovoked invasions of sovereign nations as legitimate enterprises. The slippery slope that that unrolls is a terrifying one indeed. Maybe that's the "war on terror" they should be studying for a change.