John Byrne Raw Story Monday, May 4, 2009

Asked by a fourth grader about the Bush administration’s torture techniques, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared to stumble this weekend, repeating the same phrase three times.

After taking heat last week for telling Stanford University students that waterboarding was legal “by definition if it was authorized by the president,” Rice took questions from a bit younger students at a Washington school.

Rice spoke at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital, speaking about her “love of Israel,” according to The Washington Post. She then took questions — and an enterprising fourth grader from Bethesda, Maryland posed a whopper.

Paraphrased, the question was: What did Rice think about the things President Obama’s administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?

Rice said she was reluctant to criticize Obama, and then delivered her answer.

“Let me just say that President Bush was very clear that he wanted to do everything he could to protect the country. After September 11, we wanted to protect the country,” Rice remarked. “But he was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally. So the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country.”

“I hope you understand that it was a very difficult time,” she added. “We were all so terrified of another attack on the country. September 11 was the worst day of my life in government, watching 3,000 Americans die. . . . Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal, and I hope people understand that we were trying to protect the country.”

The student’s mother also said her son had effectively been censored by school officials, who’d pressed him not to use the word torture (the questions were screened in advance).

His original question, she said, was: “If you would work for Obama’s administration, would you push for torture?”

“They wanted him to soften it and take out the word ‘torture.’ But the essence of it was the same,” Lerner quipped.