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Rumsfeld to face possible charges

geggy

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geggy
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Friday, Nov. 10, 2006
Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
A lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo
By ADAM ZAGORIN

http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,1557842,00.html

Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called "20th hijacker" and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a "special interrogation plan," personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.
 
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geggy said:
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Privacy Policy
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You may want to review the rules of this board regarding posting entire storys.
 
WildCat said:
Yeah, good luck with that.
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Why do you think the "Military Tribunal Act" included retroactive legalization of torture? Bush himself is on record mentioning exposure of "interrogators" (presumably anyone who ordered such acts would also be exposed) to war crimes prosecutions, and Abu Gonzalez' initial torture memo also mentions concern of prosecutions, and goes into great contortions to explain why only extreme abuses of prisoners could be prosectuted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/dojinterrogationmemo20020801.pdf

It should be noted that the Supreme Court struck down this argument when it ruled against Military Tribunals in the Hamdan case and said the COC can't decide for himself when to violate a law.

Also note that IANAL.
 
Still not entirely sure what's so horrible about subjecting Taliban and al-Qaida to rough treatment.
 
When will the Sudanese gov't be charged in Germany for their crimes in Darfur, I wonder.

Or the Palestinian gov't for allowing its militias to attack civilians in Israel.

Etc etc. Apparently justice in Germany depends on your politics.
 
WildCat said:
When will the Sudanese gov't be charged in Germany for their crimes in Darfur, I wonder.

Or the Palestinian gov't for allowing its militias to attack civilians in Israel.
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Uh, when the victims file suit there.

Etc etc. Apparently justice in Germany depends on your politics.
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Apparently not.
 
Polaris said:
Still not entirely sure what's so horrible about subjecting Taliban and al-Qaida to rough treatment.
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I shouldn't have to explain this, but the people being tortured by our government are not Taliban or al-Qaida. They are people suspected of being such, but have not been afforded any due process to contest that finding. So you are advocating torturing people on the say-so of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

There are numerous instances of innocent people being tortured and released from this system. There are children being held in those prisons. Until a person is found to be guilty in a fair trial, anyone who supports torturing them and then excusing that torture as simply "rough treatment" is either amoral or dishonest.

I'd argue vehemently against torturing people found guilty, but torturing a person who's had no chance to prove his innocence is pure evil, and we've been saying so as a nation for the last 50 years.
 
Unabogie said:
I shouldn't have to explain this, but the people being tortured by our government are not Taliban or al-Qaida. They are people suspected of being such, but have not been afforded any due process to contest that finding. So you are advocating torturing people on the say-so of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

There are numerous instances of innocent people being tortured and released from this system. There are children being held in those prisons. Until a person is found to be guilty in a fair trial, anyone who supports torturing them and then excusing that torture as simply "rough treatment" is either amoral or dishonest.

I'd argue vehemently against torturing people found guilty, but torturing a person who's had no chance to prove his innocence is pure evil, and we've been saying so as a nation for the last 50 years.
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Actually I'd say what happens to them is probably better than rough treatment. I have my own standards of guilt for the people in these prisons - if they are Muslim and not one of the native ethnicities of Afghanistan, or journalist/delegate/Coalition soldier/aid worker, they are there for the jihad. So no, I don't have any qualms about anything bad that happens to them, except that it might be too lenient. In fact, the idea that any Taliban or al-Qaida are allowed to live at all is galling to me.
 
Polaris said:
I have my own standards of guilt for the people in these prisons - if they are Muslim and not one of the native ethnicities of Afghanistan, or journalist/delegate/Coalition soldier/aid worker, they are there for the jihad.
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Having your own standards is just fine...as long as you are not in any justice system and cannot act on your own standards. For those who, however, ARE in the business of meting out justice, having standards of justice and having procedures for implementing those standards are important.

In the USA, those standards include "innocent until proven guilty", right to counsel, etc, etc. Such standards have served us well for hundreds of years and have helped set us up as a nation of laws, not men. It is these standards that you would want to have applied to any case you are involved in.

That you would deny fair treatment to others that you want for yourself says a lot. All of it negative.
 
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Privacy Policy
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geggy, my sweet, did you miss this little item?

And still working on that 50 years, I gather.
 
I can't believe this isn't a joke. Universal jurisdiction? Ummm...no.

Thanks for playing. Go eat some bratwurst.

AS
 
Polaris said:
Actually I'd say what happens to them is probably better than rough treatment. I have my own standards of guilt for the people in these prisons - if they are Muslim and not one of the native ethnicities of Afghanistan, or journalist/delegate/Coalition soldier/aid worker, they are there for the jihad. So no, I don't have any qualms about anything bad that happens to them, except that it might be too lenient. In fact, the idea that any Taliban or al-Qaida are allowed to live at all is galling to me.
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How do you know that a particular prisoner is Taliban or Al Qaida? Without presentation of evidence and deliberation, how do you know?
They look guilty?
Smell funny?
Talk using funny sounding words?

I don't much care for your own standards.
 
Polaris said:
Actually I'd say what happens to them is probably better than rough treatment. I have my own standards of guilt for the people in these prisons - if they are Muslim and not one of the native ethnicities of Afghanistan, or journalist/delegate/Coalition soldier/aid worker, they are there for the jihad. So no, I don't have any qualms about anything bad that happens to them, except that it might be too lenient. In fact, the idea that any Taliban or al-Qaida are allowed to live at all is galling to me.
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I'm having a hard time accepting your position. I can only assume that you are unaware of the number and magnitude of the mistakes made in imprisoning people at Abu Ghraib.

Many of the people held and later released from Abu Ghraib were there as cases of mistaken identity. People who had names similar to terror suspects were rounded up and imprisoned. Captors ignored their pleas of innocence and the prisoners, who had access neither to legal counsel nor to any sort of trial or hearing, were unable to prove that they were not terrorists.

Other people ended up at Abu Ghraib because petty criminals would kidnap innocent people, bring them to military bases, and claim that the victim was one of the wanted terrorists with rewards on their heads. Early on in the war, the military had no way of knowing whether the claims were true or not so the kidnap victim was placed in prison.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/17597prs20050310.html
A former commander of the 320th Military Police Battalion notes in a sworn statement, "It became obvious to me that the majority of our detainees were detained as the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were swept up by Coalition Forces as peripheral bystanders during raids. I think perhaps only one in ten security detainees were of any particular intelligence value."
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The fact that hundreds of prisoners have been released is evidence that innocent people have been exposed to abuses at Abu Ghraib.

You state that you are galled that Taliban and al-Queda members are allowed to live at all. Are you not also galled that innocent people have been imprisoned, have been abused, and have died?
 
I think Polaris's post just reveals that he hates Muslims because (he thinks) they are all jihadists. That's ok, though, because all christians are Crusaders too. We should start imprisoning them as well.
 
Dr Adequate said:
Uh, when the victims file suit there.
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Yeah, I'm sure that those people filed suit all on their own accord, and weren't aided at all by someone w/ an anti-US agenda.

Hans: Look Franz, there is an ongoing genocide in Darfur, we should try to do something about it!
Franz: Never mind that, the evil fascist Bush regime is making naked pyramids in Abu Ghraib!
Hans: Mein Gott, we must put an end to this madness!
 
nails said:
Good. Its clearly his fault, imo. Creepily similar behavior happened in the stanford prison experiment in the 70's. clear guidelines need to be made or its just going to happen. Abu grahib could have been prevented by him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
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It could have more easily been prevented by the person in charge of the prison, but she has decided to blame everyone else but herself and has become a minor hero to the "Bush is Hitler" crowd. She was, after all, actually there every day. I don't think Rumsfeld and Bush ever set foot in Agu Ghraib, but hey let's blame them to achieve a political agenda.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq.
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No, no, it wasn't me that was in charge! Those privates and corporals under my direct supervision got their orders directly from Rumsfeld and Bush!
 
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WildCat said:
It could have more easily been prevented by the person in charge of the prison, but she has decided to blame everyone else but herself and has become a minor hero to the "Bush is Hitler" crowd. She was, after all, actually there every day. I don't think Rumsfeld and Bush ever set foot in Agu Ghraib, but hey let's blame them to achieve a political agenda.


No, no, it wasn't me that was in charge! Those privates and corporals under my direct supervision got their orders directly from Rumsfeld and Bush!
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Perhaps you should have read more information.

From the 'conclusions' section:

"In psychology, the results of the experiment are said to support situational attirbutions of behavior rather than dispositional attribution. In other words, it seemed to entail that the situation caused the participants' behavior rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities. In this way it is compatible with the results of the also-famous (or infamous) Milgram experiment, in which ordinary people fulfilled orders to administer what appeared to be fatal electric shocksto a confederate of the experimenter."


Now, who controlled the situation? Who was in charge of making guidelines for the soldiers behavior?


Most people would behave in the same manner if they were in an identical situation. There are many other behaviors that have been found to be more situational than personal. The fact that most people will not contact emergency services if they know multiple other people are witnessing the same crime is one phenomena (sp?) that gets reproduced over and over both in experiments and in the real world.
 
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