Torture? Us?

You almost had to feel sorry for her.

Almost.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, touring European capitals in an attempt to shore up support for the Global War on Terror (GWOT), is in the impossible position of denying what everyone knows all too well. She insisted that the US does not torture prisoners, does not maintain secret prisons for GWOT detainees, and does not export prisoners to less-squeamish countries such as Egypt and Syria for the really heavy stuff.

Of course, with more and more evidence piling up every day of exactly that, no one believed a word she said. It certainly doesn't help that the Bush Administration put a lot of intellectual effort into redefining torture to exclude everything short of death or "permanent organ failure," just so we can deny that torture is taking place. Nor does it help that Vice President Cheney is aggressively lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from American anti-torture laws.

In Germany, newly elected Prime Minister Angela Merkel raked Rice over the coals about a German citizen named Khalid el-Masri. Seized off a bus in Macedonia because his name was similar to a wanted al Qaeda suspect, el-Masri was secretly shipped to a American prison in Afghanistan and tortured for five months before the CIA realized they had the wrong man. Without so much as an "oops, sorry about that," the CIA dumped him in Albania and tried to hush it up. With the help of the ACLU, el-Masri is now suing former CIA director George Tenet in federal court, but the government refuses to let him into the country. Merkel reported that Rice admitted American wrongdoing and apologized. Rice, of course, denied this.

In Italy, the government in Rome is furious over the clumsy CIA abduction of a Islamic cleric from the streets of Milan - a cleric that Italy had under surveillance. The CIA did not coordinate their action with the Italian government, choosing instead to shred local law and just go get him, destroying an Italian intelligence investigation at the same time.

Rice's stock response to European anger is that while occasional mistakes are made, everything we do in pursuit of the GWOT is to protect not just American but European lives, so the proper response from the Continent is to sit down and shut up. The targets of her little lecture are understandably irked at being spoken to in this manner.

All in all, it was not one of the finer moments in American foreign relations. By phrasing her statements with almost Clintonian exactitude to leave a whole lot unsaid, Rice came across not as a level-headed diplomat eager to recruit international help in combating terrorism, but as a blank-faced defender of a tormenting bully.

The Bush Administration seems determined to prove their own government-can't-do-anything-right rhetoric by screwing up everything they touch. Nevertheless, when we're facing an enemy as determined to destroy us as al Qaeda is, alienating your few remaining allies is not the way to go.