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So just why is it that the U.S. has fewer friends than before. Condi Rice’s waffling provides a clue. According top the New York Times she clarified the picture on the American torture scandal: Rice Clarifies U.S. Interrogation Policy. But I come away from this article, and from her speech, more than convinced that the U.S. condones torture.

She delivered a weasel worded, lawyer sanctioned speech. She completely avoids rendition and speaks only about what U.S. citizens can or can’t do. Piffle! That’s not the issue. What we want to know is whether the U.S. sends people elsewhere to have them tortured by surrogates. Which is morally equivalent to allowing U.S. citizens to torture someone.

America already has its hands dirty in the infamous Khaled el-Masri case. He is a German citizen abducted by the U.S. in Germany, flown to Afghanistan, tortured for five months and then released because the Americans realized they had the wrong guy! Now he is suing the CIA and various senior officials. How does he fit Rice’s careful world?

And: if the U.S. doesn’t condone torture by its citizens, why is Cheney still trying to get the CIA excluded from the McCain anti-torture legislation?

Either Rice is a Cheney stooge or she is overwhelmed by him. Neither offers a flattering picture.

America is justifiably proud of its free press. It even brings in foreign journalists from places like Iraq to give them U.S. government sponsored classes on how a free press should act. Like: don’t be taken in by, or print, government propoganda. The Iraqis are reportedly impressed by the classes. I wonder what they’ll make of the fact that the Pentagon has hired an agency to write ‘upbeat news stories’ to place in the local Iraqi press to put forward a ‘more realistic’ view than the [apparently not free enough and presumably inaccurate] local press is already doing? I guess they won’t be upset that the agency sub-contracted the writing to someone else who, and this is just a coincidence, happened to be a former bigwig of the Republican Party. Do as I say, not do as I do? Anyway, as I said, America should be proud of its free press.

For those of you who missed it: Governor Arnie of California has just appointed a new Chief of Staff to help him repair the disastrous damage he did to himself when he put forward those four propositions that were all resoundingly defeated in last months polls. No surprise there: he needs all the help he can get. But. Well the issue is that the new staffer is … well … a Democrat. Yes you read that correctly. The new staffer is none other than Susan Kennedy [no not one of those Kennedys] who held a top post in the former Governor Grey Davis’ administration. You know, the Governor Davis that our Arnie rose up in revolt against. Well now there’s a thing. No wonder Repubilcans throughout the country are aghast. Wasn’t Arnie spoken of as a potential presidential contender? Not now I imagine. Not now that he’s brought in one of the enemy to help fix his problems! Whatever next … raising taxes to pay off the deficit? Surely not! Arnie the heretic … I like that.

I think George Bush must be heartily sick of the bill of goods Dick Cheney and the neo-con gang sold him. Why else would he slink off to a military arena — the Naval Academy — mid-morning to address a captive symapthetic audience about his ‘vision’ for vistory in Iraq? Because he’s afraid that the rest of us may notice that his ‘new’ plan aka ‘National Strategy for Victory in Iraq’ is neither new nor a strategy. He’s either a coward or he’s liar — possibly both because his speech was just more of the same.

The problem remains defining what the victory conditions are. At one point in his speech Bush said that victory is when America has trained enough Iraqis so that they can defend themselves [From the insurrection we stirred up!]. At another he said that victory is no less than the defeat of the Islamists and Saddamists [As if they are one and the same]. These aren’t the same thing. So which is it? If he is so muddled on the basic definition of our knowing when we’ve won, of course he’s muddled on everything else. Which is why there is still no clarity over when the end might arrive.

As an effort in rallying people to his cause the speeech failed. He keeps repeating the same old ‘we will never back down’ stuff as if we believe him. Of course we will back down if enough Republicans feel that they will lose their seats next year. That’s Democracy for you. Bush has still completely missed the notion that he cannot sell the war as a global engagemnet of World War proportions without doing World War kinds of things like instituting a draft, raising taxes to pay for the titanic effort, asking for sacrifices from the general population and generally mobilizing the country and focusing on a single objective: winning the war. He hasn’t done that. Yet he struts around as if he’s Churchill and makes Churchillian statements. It is roughly three years now since this all started: during an equivalent period in the early 1940’s America had destroyed, or helped destroy, two world powers and conquered vast swathes of the several continents. It had put vast armies in the field, equipped not just them but a goodly part of the Allies as well, and turned its industrial base into an unstoppable juggernaut. Bush has only just delivered a plan. He’s a pathetic minnow by comparison to his 1940’s predecessors. A minnow, moreover, who knows damned well why he won’t ask for sacrifice: he sold the country the same bill of goods that Cheney sold him. There was no need for this war. He should have focused on Bin Laden not Saddam.

Still we have no leadership. Still we have no strategy. Still we have no idea. Ah … but we have George Bush. I feel safer already.