Condoleezza Rice Vs. 4th Grader

If Condoleezza Rice thought the students of Stanford were a tough crowd, she hadn't yet met the fourth-grade class of the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation's Capital.The Washington Post is reporting that Rice declared, in response to a question from a pupil there, that all the methods used by the Bush administration during interrogations were legal:

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?
Rice took the question in stride. Saying that she was reluctant to criticize Obama, then getting to the heart of the matter.
"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," she said. "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."

President Obama has publicly called out the previous administration's use of waterboarding as torture. George W. Bush has largely been silent on the new administration's position, while Dick Cheney has been anything but. Rice seems to be awkwardly trying to split the difference between the two – dodging questions about Obama's statement that it was torture, while also using the authority of the previous president to justify its legality.

The worst part of the story is that the question Misha originally intended to ask was screened out as too harsh, so the softer version, without the word "torture," was used. When fourth-graders are pulling their punches – or, rather, having them pulled – your position is pretty shaky.