Condoleeza Rice can’t even go to an elementary school without getting questioned about her role in torturing people:
Rice, in her first appearance in Washington since leaving government, was at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital before giving an evening lecture at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. She held forth amiably before a few dozen students about her love of Israel, travel abroad and the importance of learning languages, then opened the floor to their questions.
The questions had been developed beforehand by students with their teachers and had not been screened by Rice.
[ . . . ]
Then Misha Lerner, a student from Bethesda, asked: 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?
[ . . . ]
Misha’s mother, Inna Lerner, said the question her son had initially come up with was even tougher: “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 said.
See, Rice doesn’t deal with questions about torture very well. She lied to the 4th grader, of course, but at least she didn’t browbeat him the way she did this Stanford student last week:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijEED_iviTA[/youtube]
While you and I may not have the power to give Rice and crew what they deserve – an indictment and trial – we may well have the opportunity to press them – repeatedly, insistently, and publicly – on what they did. They should have to suffer consequences for what they’ve done for the rest of their lives. The Stanford student gets it. The fourth grader gets it. Do you? Will you do it, when the opportunity comes?