All in Error

BUCHAREST, Romania, Dec. 6 -- The Bush administration has admitted it mistakenly abducted a German citizen it suspected of terrorist links, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice, addressing reporters in Berlin with Merkel, declined to comment on the specific case of Khaled Masri, but she said she pledged to the German leader that "when and if mistakes are made, we work very hard and as quickly as possible to rectify them." Her aides scrambled to say Rice did not admit an error.

Merkel's statement that "the American administration has admitted this man has been erroneously taken" was relayed by an interpreter and came as European scrutiny of the U.S. policy of secretly taking terrorism suspects to clandestine detention centers for extrajudicial interrogations has intensified.

The Washington Post has another interesting story about how this mistake occured in the CIA here.

Condi and The Administration stop short, of course, of formally appologizing or explainingg what's gone on in this case. Nor do they touch the topic of Masri's torture while incarcerated, illegally and mistakenly. Was the torture or a German mistakenly picked up also a mistake to be brushed away and forgotton?