Did Anybody Explain "Russian Roulette" to Them?

Condi Rice says: it's all a misunderstanding.

Noting that half-a-dozen international investigations are underway, Ms. Rice did not explicitly confirm the existence of the detentions center. But that was implicit in her remarks.

"We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible," she said. "But there have been many cases where the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option."

"In those cases," she added, "the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in the transfer of a suspect to a third country, which is known as a rendition.

"Sometimes, these efforts are misunderstood," she said.

"Implicit," by the way, is in the ear of the reporter:

There have been allegations that the US spy agency set up facilities in central or eastern Europe following the 11 September 2001 attacks, where terror suspects have been interrogated without reference to international law.

Ms Rice refused to address the question directly.

"We cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement, and military operations. We expect other nations share this view," she said in a statement at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.

Spain, Sweden, and Iceland are investigating whether planes landed on their soil carrying CIA prisoners; and now Germany is concerned, too.

Per a German MP interviewed on BBC Radio World Service this morning, such flights, even if the plane only "touched German soil," would violate the Human Rights accords of the European Union. This MP went on to say that he had assumed the German government was ignorant as to the prisons and these flights; if it turns out the government knew, well, a political price would be extracted.

And it's not like Germany has any reason to be concerned about our intentions, (or to have any reason to abhor torture, for that matter):

In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country's interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA's Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.

Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.

Rather than address the issue, Rice is busily engaging in the typically American, and extremely reprehensible, "moral" argument that our intentions (to make us all safer, or to "do good in the world") outweigh our actions. Per the BBC World Service report, Rice is stressing that EU countries "signed on" with the U.S. in the "war on terror" (which, as the BBC kept pointing out, is what "Americans" call it), and need to pipe down now. In other words, the Bush Administration seems to think that they have put a gun to their allies' collective heads.

But they may have pulled the trigger, too.