AngryBrownButch

From Reuters AlertNet: Bush vows “we do not torture” terror suspects:

“We do not torture and therefore we’re working with Congress to make sure that as we go forward, we make it more possible to do our job,” Bush said.

And by working with Congress, they Bush Administration apparently means sending in Cheney to fight efforts by Congress to outlaw federal agencies from using torture. Because yeah, whatever, they don’t torture. But they just want to be able to. You know. Just in case.

At least Condoleezza Rice is making a whit of sense, for once.

In recent months, Cheney has been the force against adding safeguards to the Defense Department’s rules on treatment of military prisoners, putting him at odds with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England. On a trip to Canada last month, Rice interrupted a packed itinerary to hold a secure video-teleconference with Cheney on detainee policy to make sure no decisions were made without her input.

… 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.

One might wish that Rice wanted to change the rules in order to uphold human rights and some notion of true justice, rather than to “get out of the detainee mess.” But we’ll take what little we can get, I suppose.