CIA speech reflects Cheney-Rice rift

[sabra]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060907/7cheney.htm

CIA speech reflects Cheney-Rice rift

Readers of the administration's tea leaves say the CIA prison issue illustrated again the fault lines between Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on how hard a line the administration should take on preserving executive power.

Cheney has been the lead advocate of the theory that the commander in chief has almost untrammeled authority to protect the nation's security--including the power to determine how terrorist detainees are treated. White House insiders say that Cheney has been arguing that case in recent months in discussions over what the next steps should be in dealing with the secret-prisons issue. On the other hand, Rice has been increasingly concerned about America's image abroad and lingering perceptions that the United States brutalizes detainees and violates its own principles in pursuing the war on terrorism.

This story is unfolding, but administration sources say that Bush appears to have settled on a compromise between Cheney and Rice--giving ground on the secret-prisons issue and on military tribunals but holding fast to the CIA's ability to conduct interrogations outside the military's rules.

[deminks]

1. Here is a WP link, also

Decision to Move Detainees Resolved Two-Year Debate Among Bush Advisers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701582.html?nav=rss_politics/administration

Shackled and hooded, 14 men in secret CIA custody were gathered one by one from locations across the world last weekend and flown to a rallying point to await one more flight. For some of the prisoners, it was their third or fourth journey to yet another unknown destination since President Bush approved a covert plan for them to disappear into CIA facilities hidden throughout Eastern Europe and Asia.

On Sunday night, the men -- three Pakistanis, two Yemenis, two Saudis, two Malaysians, a Palestinian, a Libyan, a Somali, an Indonesian and a Tanzanian -- were sedated and placed together onto a flight to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They arrived Labor Day morning, an unusually quiet time at the Pentagon-run facility.


The arrival of the prisoners, witnessed by few beyond the CIA officers accompanying them, marked the end of a five-year effort by the Bush administration to conceal as many as 100 al-Qaeda suspects from the world and to shield the agency's interrogation tactics and facilities from public scrutiny. It was also the result of nearly two years of debate within the Bush White House, touched off by a personal plea from British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the release of British citizens in U.S. custody.

The debate divided the president's key advisers and kept open the CIA's "black sites" until President Bush himself, under the advice of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, ordered the facilities emptied for now, and possibly for good.

[TomInTib]

2. This helps explain the recent absence of Miss Russia from the scene

I will bet things are really interesting in DC.

[hvn_nbr_2]

3. She's in a secret prison in Cheney's basement. nt

[bluestateguy]

4. Rice the "moderate"

Shows how fucked up things have become these days.

[razors edge]

5. sounds like *

flip flopped.

[Nikki Stone 1]

6. Maybe Condi is learning something from her new position

Spending time outside the US can really make you understand how America is perceived abroad.