by James Glaser
December 7, 2005

President George Bush told the world, "Our country is at war and our government has the obligation to protect the American people, any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not torture."

From Arabic News.com, "US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the United States does not permit or tolerate the torture of any terrorists detained in its custody.

Now the world is not going to buy these two statements for many reasons, but the biggest reason is that most of the world has seen the photographs of the prisoners we have tortured in the past, and are currently torturing now. In the past the torture took place in Iraq and Afghanistan, and currently we torture people at our base in Cuba, and reported secret prisons all over the globe.

Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch says this about Secretary Rice's claims, "The reason she is able to say the United States does not engage in Torture, is that the administration has redefined torture to exclude any technique that they use. "What makes this awkward for Secretary Rice is that the State Department has continued to condemn as torture techniques such as waterboarding when they are used by other countries—in other words the very techniques the CIA has used against high level detainees."

Reports of our torturing prisoners, accompanied with photographs have been used in stories by both Time and Newsweek, along with every other American publication, but now the President and the Secretary of State are claiming we don't torture.

The world and most Americans know we torture... and because of that, they know the President and the Secretary of State are lying. They look foolish when they make these claims, and our country looks foolish for keeping these two in power.