Update: If the President Does it, Then it’s Not Illegal?

Condoleeza Rice has changed her story.  Earlier, Left Agenda posted a video of Rice specifically stating that if the president authorizes something it is ipso facto legal.  This absurd claim must have been pointed out to her because now she’s changed it:

“He was also very clear that we would do nothing — nothing — that was against the law or against our obligations internationally,”

What’s frightening is that what Rice is saying is a perfect example of the loss of rational debate and reason within the Bush administration.  Like children being given instructions by the father, the administration blindly followed anything and everything that President Cheney Bush said.  By Rice’s reasoning, water-boarding isn’t torture because the president said he wouldn’t do anything illegal and since he did it that means it wasn’t illegal.  That’s circular reasoning at its finest.  

It’s time to set the record straight, and hold Bush administration officials, CIA officials and Pentagon officials accountable for their actions and their silence.  In saving their jobs by not objecting, they have sold out America.

Bush administration officials were not capable of thwarting the attack on 9/11 and they weren’t capable of making decisions afterwords:

“I hope people understand that it was a struggle, it was a difficult time,” she said. “We were all terrified of another attack on this country because September 11 was the worst day of my life in government — watching 3,000 Americans die because these people attacked us.” But she added, “Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal.”

Anyone remember, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself?”  Apparently, Rice doesn’t.  An effective leader does not allow this to happen, an effective leader doesn’t stoke the flames of fear to push an unjustified war, and effective leader doesn’t commit crimes against humanity because they were “terrified.”