JAPAN TIMES:There is now enough evidence to try former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes
NEW YORK -- There is now enough evidence to try former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes, Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, recently told "Frontal 21," a German television program.
Nowak's statement confirms what human rights and legal organizations have been saying for several years, and spotlights one of the Bush administration's most controversial decisions regarding the use of torture.
Nowak's statement follows a bipartisan Senate Arms Services Committee investigation made public in December. In scathing and unequivocal terms, the investigation revealed that Rumsfeld and other high-ranking administration officials, including former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, bore major responsibility for detainee abuse by American troops at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.
This "bipartisan Senate Arms Services Committee investigation made public in December" is news to me. Anyone out there?
The abuse was not the result of only a few soldiers acting on their own, but the consequence of interrogation policies approved by Rumsfeld and other top officials who "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees."
If americans acting for the defense of the people are to be tried for 'torture' (piling naked people into a pyramid may be criminally ugly...but is this Yamashita level stuff?) both on the spot when it deviates from what we expect as lawful, and up top, then WHO in the chain of command will do anything but server glazed chicken with pilaf and deny access to all questioners, OR conversely, NEVER JOIN, NEVER ACT, NEVER VOLUNTEER?
Lyndie England and her cohort ARE criminals. But you can be sure of one thing, this kind of Scopes Trial will be a test case for an avalanche which will unleash a partisan civil war among republicnas and democrats and the extreme left which will PERMANENTLY polarize this nation and institutionalize the criminalization of outbound political power wielders.
However the import of this article is that the Japan Times has presented it, and doen so as if it is a bypartisan factual representation of objective reality.
READ IT ALL HERE
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