Monday’s Washington Post has yet another story, “Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy”, about Cheney’s hard line stance against McCain’s anti-torture amendment. This article raises the stakes a bit though.
WaPo’s Dana Priest (who broke the story about the secret CIA prisons) and Robin Wright reveal through their sources that those who oppose Cheney now include Condi Rice, acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England and Elliot Abrams. They also state that:
Personnel changes in President Bush’s second term have added to the isolation of Cheney, who previously had been able to prevail in part because other key parties to the debate — including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet Miers — continued to sit on the fence.
Gonzales sat on the fence? Sorry, but he fell off that fence a long time ago and landed squarely in Cheney’s lap. As for Miers, now that she’s withdrawn her nomination for SCOTUS, we’ll never know exactly what her role was in all of this. Even if she had made the hearings, the WH would have claimed executive privilege anyway.
So, what’s Rice doing opposing Cheney? Apparently, she’s concerned about her dear leader’s policy agenda. We all know what a faithful Bush lapdog she is. But – one really has to wonder what’s going on behind the scenes. It seems to me that if Rice was so opposed to these repressive detention and torture policies all along, she would have said so. And what about Bush? He had threatened to veto the defense appropriations bill if it included McCain’s anti-torture amendment.
Why this sudden change of heart for Rice? Frankly, I don’t believe she’s had one. She has co-signed everything Bush has done – without exception. I think that whoever is speaking to WaPo on her behalf is full of it. The article states:
At the same time Rice has emerged as an advocate for changing the rules to “get out of the detainee mess,” said one senior U.S. official familiar with discussions. Her top advisers, along with their Pentagon counterparts, are working on a package of proposals designed to address all controversial detainee issues at once, instead of dealing with them on a piecemeal basis.
[…]
“The debate in the world has become about whether the U.S. complies with its legal obligations. We need to regain the moral high ground,” said one senior administration official familiar with internal deliberations on the issue…
Regain the moral high ground? I thought the neocons already believed they owned the piece of property the moral high ground sits on. Not only that – it’s tax exempt and they rent it out to religious wingnuts when it suits their purposes.
Whatever is going on, it must be hell working around Cheney. His approval ratings are at 19%. He’s VP of Torture now and he’s hanging on to this issue with a death grip. How can Bush possibly stop this massive hemorrhaging? It’ll ruin his “tough-guy” image if he goes soft on torture. Maybe McCain’s wife is a covert CIA agent who’ll be outed soon too.
“Detainee mess” indeed. There’s no way Rice will be able to charge in and fix this one for her husband…I mean “president”.