After not ignoring repeated warnings of al-Qaeda sleeper cells planning attacks in the US, Condoleeza Rice says she also did not ignore reports of abuses in US military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba.
Among the the warnings to which she didn't not pay attention:
Rice said that in the fall of 2002, the White House "was made aware that there were some concerns that people might have been held at Guantanamo who didn't meet the definition of unlawful combatant.
"There were also early on ... some concerns about conditions of overcrowding. But nothing that suggested, to my recollection, that there were abuses ... going on at Guantanamo, and certainly nothing that would suggest the kind of thing that went on in Abu Ghraib," she said, referring to the infamous Iraqi prison.
But, according to the New York Times, a new book says Rice not only knew about the trouble at Camp X-Ray, but discussed the matter with Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld:
Mr. Hersh asserts that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst who visited the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in the late summer of 2002 filed a report of abuses there that drew the attention of Gen. John A. Gordon, a deputy to Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser.
But when General Gordon called the matter to her attention and she discussed it with other senior officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, no significant change resulted.
To be fair to Dr Rice, there's a lot to not ignore in her job, and so little time to not do anything about it.
Sad and heartsick.
