Colin Powell was on Face The Nation today. Bob Schieffer lead the interview by asking him first about a recent volley of remarks that one might say started with Powell critizing conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh during Q&A at a cybersecurity conference, as reported by Chris Strohm of Congress Daily. Then Cheney went on the record, also on Face The Nation, after being asked by Schieffer, saying he’d pick Limbaugh over Powell. Powell’s response this morning was, in part, to affirm he still saw himself as a Republican and to invoke Jack Kemp as an example he admired.

Washington’s stenographers must’ve started scribbling as soon as they heard this because that has become the headline of the day at both the Washington Post (“Still a Republican, Powell Urges Party to Become More Inclusive“) and the New York Times (“Powell Still a Republican, Despite Party Differences“).

But Schieffer also asked Powell if he agreed that EITs were effective and when he knew about them. Powell claimed to have been kept apart, without direct knowledge, and that the CIA “had to be given some room” (really, given their history of abuse?). Schieffer didn’t ask Powell why he didn’t insist on knowing the nature of the elicitations in which were given to him and his aid, Lawrence Wilkerson, as evidence for claims he had to make to the world.

While admitting being party to some discussions, Powell pleaded ignorance, saying “I don’t know know what I don’t know.” Logic hard to deny, but he’s really not saying anything there. Almost Rumsfeldian.

At the same time, in saying “we” used “EITs” — a pseudonym for torture — he admits to his complicity in human rights abuses. He seems to think it was OK to do that, but maybe just for a year or two. “It’s easy now to look back … to say … you shouldn’t have done anything. … Now we see that these [tactics] are not appropriate,” Powell said.

The Geneva Conventions didn’t make that clear before? Isn’t there some contradiction suggested in what Powell admits being a party to and what he says he didn’t know at the time? Such questions were not pressed in the studio.

If we take Powell at his word, he seems to have conveniently not known and not asked (and if he asked and got no answer, still proceeded in his role as an apparent cog rather than a principal), despite his responsibility.

The importance of this issue and the overall shallowness of Powell’s replies, as a one-time “principal,” seems more critical to me than his political affiliation and political name-calling. To me this subject of national security, the answers, the questions and the un-asked questions would make a more substantive lead.

Isn’t it relevant to ask why Powell was making claims apparently based on assertions with little context from an agency (CIA) with a known track record of lying? An agency whose other primary source for other claims (“Curveball”) was challenged by the Defense Intelligence Agency? This was when Powell was Secretary of State and reports say that the State Department’s own Bureau of Intelligence and Research was skeptical of these claims.

My friend Sam Husseini was outside Face The Nation, and followed-up to ask Powell about torture that produced lies used in support of the specious claims Powell made before the United Nations. Jonathan Schwarz sees a disparity between Powell’s comments now and what he said before the UN.

Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst (who once had a sting briefing the first President Bush) and Catholic activist, has written a piece based in part on an email interview with Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief aide during his reign over the State Department, that should leave even more questions in your mind. One might even wonder if Powell is leaving Wilkerson out to dry.

Updated (26 May 2009): Robert Parry at Consortium News follows-up on Powell’s Face The Nation appearance and Sam’s question, bringing along analysis that goes deeper into Powell’s career.

I’m looking at a copy of the Senate Armed Services Committee report entitled “Inquiry Into the Treatment Of Detainees In U.S. Custody, November 20, 2008 (Released, April 22, 2009).

I’ve read some passages near the end about Captain Donovan’s protests within the chain of command, it seems, against the justifications and just of certain tactics. It was his opinion that it would threaten the very programs seemingly used to justify the tactics. The implication as I read it, is that these tactics threatened the safety of U.S. troops in more than one way: by invalidating the programs the tactics evolved out of, which were meant to protect U.S. personnel, and by threatening U.S. personnel in that such tactics might be more likely to be used against now that the U.S. was applying them to perceived and alleged enemies.

This was in 2003.

Now, others have read much more of this report and are doing much more thorough reporting. This is where the New York Times shines, relatively, and the sort of subject McClatchy (and the spirit of Knight-Ridder) does well. Salon is on it… it’s all over. Go read.

• McClatchy: Abusive tactics were used to find Iraq-al Qaida link — a link that did not exist until after we showed up.
• NYT: Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques
• NYT: In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Past Use
• Salon: Rumsfeld: Architect of torture

A lot of it seems to be tied to Rumsfeld in ways some might not have imagined, unless you were saved from typical American amnesia and recall Rumsfeld’s writing in the margins on directives regarding Abu Ghraib.

I’m stretched a bit thin with interests and obligations, otherwise I’d be digging into this. But others certainly seem to be on the ball. Looking at the time stamps on the RSS feeds that pushed some of these articles to me and at the embargo time on the paper copy of the report in front of me, I would say that these articles have been waiting in the wings and their authors have been reading this report all day.

CIA, as always, used very careful language:

CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites…

This seems to make it clear that there remain such sites, that the CIA doesn’t believe it is the operating authority of them, but they do seem to believe they have the authority or at least influence to decommission them (this may be a red herring). It seems notable to mention that it has been a long-standing practice, before these apparently post-9/11 black sites, for the United States to hand-off prisoners to other countries who have widely been understood to use torture. They’ve always used the language of plausible deniability with regards to these relationships, so there is no reason to believe any similar language now.