[Peace-discussion] Re: Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case (and a note on Ned Lamont)

[Henry D.]

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Jeff, Nancy, friends,
   
  When people talk about "another 911 in the making," are they clear that should something terrible go down in the US homeland like a bio- or other-terrrorist attack, the 99 out of 100 times, most likely culprit will be from right-wing forces with allies / training / access within the US armed forces?
   
  I think these kind of things are called "black operations" but on a smaller scale they are acts committed by agent provacateurs to bring down upon popular movements, government repression.
   
  By the way, Ned Lamont, by running largely on the single issue of pulling our troops out of Iraq, got 40 percent of the vote! 
   
  Bill Clinton and Baraq Obama refused to campaign for him but he got 40 'effin percent!!!!
   
  So the the Democrats that refuse to impeach or try the paleo-terrorists frequently called neo-cons, or even save our troops by getting them out of Iraq can know this fact: 
   
  40 percent of voters, not merely democrats, will not vote for a pro-war democrat/republican.
   
  Linda Haynes from the Kucinich campaign, to her credit, publicly stated she would not vote for the democratic party nominee in her US Congressional district.
   
   
  We want our troops home today, and trials for the main war-promoters like Lieberman, Clinton, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Bush tomorrow. 
   
  We will organize, agitate, and wait until justice is done.
  love, hank
    Posted by: "eat each other" eateachother@charter.net   letthemeateachother   Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:38 pm (PST)   The light I noticed was WAY down there at the end of the tunnel,
but I know I saw some.

If I never mentioned, I think our way of life is absolutely
doomed, since we rely on exports to maintain it. I am just happy
we don't have an outright dictatorship. I am also sad, angry and
hateful that we have troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. We will have
to go through hell still, but the fact that enough of these idiot
Americans KNOW better than to trust the Bush team, and are not
into the war in Iraq, not to mention interested in social
security, health care, etc. Just the fact that people are
becoming interested is enough to make me hopeful, not that we
will avoid the hardships, but rather to know that there may still
be enough humans who want not to evolve into robot golfers.

cather392000 wrote: Unless, of course, there is "anothe
nineleven" in the making, as we've been warned several times.
For instance, just tonight comes the word of possible nuclear
attack at Watts Bar nuclear facility in Tennessee. Those
"reliable sources" in hig positions have given several warnings 
in the last 5 years, all of which received great publicity. Some
think the events are put off or aborted because of information 
becoming too general for another false flag to succeed. The
warning from "hig up" is that it is set for 11-11-06. That's 
Veterans' Day -- tomorrow -- or rather, today. Time will tell. 
Nancy --- In PeaceTalkBham@ yahoogroups. com
<mailto:PeaceTalkBham@ yahoogroups. com> , eat each other 
<eateachother@ ...> <mailto:eateachothe r@...> wrote: 
And if Rumsfeld is guilty then let us not forget Alberto
Gonzales. (plus I mistakenly left L. Paul
Bremmer off my short list yesterday) As Jack said the
Republicans will try to put it all off on Rumsfeld,
but we should be happy to the onion start to peel, and
public opinion is more and more on the side
of getting the troops out or Iraq, if not Afghanistan. I was
really getting scared there, like we'd never get the 
government to stop waterboarding and other torture.
The public would NOT like to see a few of
these sessions on tape. I don't think it looks like war
between the Dems and the Repugs now, because they are
all so damn dirty, but at least we may
avoid a fascist dictatorship (MAYBE). I wish we'd hold the
press' feet to the fire for not doing thir job, and
the Dems too, but I do feel a little sigh of relief coming on
that the hearings may finally begin. And
Germany... haha!! Light. Wythe Holt jr. wrote: 
Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case By Marjorie Cohn Jurist 
November 9, 2006 As the Democrats took control of the House
of Representatives and were on the verge of
taking over the Senate, George W. Bush announced that Donald
Rumsfeld was out and Robert Gates was in as Secretary of 
Defense. When Bush is being run out of town, he knows how to get
out in the front of the crowd and make it look like he's leading
the parade. The Rumsfeld-Gates swap is a classic example.
The election was a referendum on the war. The dramatic results
prove that the overwhelming majority of people in this country
don't like the disaster Bush has created in Iraq. So rather
than let the airwaves fill up with beaming Democrats and talk of
the horrors of Iraq, Bush changed the subject and fired
Rumsfeld. Now, when the Democrats begin to investigate what
went wrong, Rumsfeld will no longer be the controversial public
face of the war. Rumsfeld had come under fire
from many quarters, not the least of which was
a gaggle of military officers who had been clamoring for his
resignation. Bush said he decided to oust Rumsfeld before 
Tuesday's voting but lied to reporters so it wouldn't affect the 
election. Putting aside the incredulity of that claim, Bush
likely waited to see if there would be a changing of the
legislative guard before giving Rumsfeld his walking papers. If
the GOP had retained control of Congress, Bush would probably
have retained Rumsfeld. But in hindsight, Bush has to wish he
had ejected Rumsfeld before the election to demonstrate a new
direction in the Iraq war to angry voters. 
Rumsfeld's sin was not in failing to develop a winning strategy
for Iraq. There is no winning in Iraq, because we never belonged
there in the first place. The war in Iraq is a war of
aggression. It violates the United Nations Charter which only
permits one country to invade another in self-defense or with
the blessing of the Security Council. Donald
Rumsfeld was one of the primary architects of the Iraq
war. On September 15, 2001, in a meeting at Camp David, Rumsfeld
suggested an attack on Iraq because he was deeply worried about
the availability of "good targets in Afghanistan. " Former
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported that Rumsfeld
articulated his hope to "dissuade" other nations from
"asymmetrical challenges" to U.S. power. Rumsfeld's support for
a preemptive attack on Iraq "matched with plans for how the
world's second largest oil reserve might be divided among the
world's contractors made for an irresistible combination, " Ron
Suskind wrote after interviewing O'Neill. 
Rumsfeld defensively sought to decouple oil access from regime
change in Iraq when he appeared on CBS News on November 15, 2002.
In a Macbeth moment, Rumsfeld proclaimed the United States' beef
with Iraq has "nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do
with oil." The Secretary doth protest too much.
Prosecuting a war of aggression isn't Rumsfeld's only crime. He
also participated in the highest levels of decision-making that 
allowed the extrajudicial execution of several people. Willful 
killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, which 
constitutes a war crime. In his book, Chain of Command: The Road
from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, Seymour Hersh described the
"unacknowledged" special-access program (SAP) established by a
top-secret order Bush signed in late 2001 or early 2002. It
authorized the Defense Department to set up a clandestine team
of Special Forces operatives to defy international law and
snatch, or assassinate, anyone considered a "high-value" Al
Qaeda operative, anywhere in the world. Rumsfeld expanded SAP
into Iraq in August 2003. But Rumsfeld's
crimes don't end there. He sanctioned the use of
torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, which are
grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and thus constitute
war crimes. Rumsfeld approved interrogation techniques that
included the use of dogs, removal of clothing, hooding, stress
positions, isolation for up to 30 days, 20-hour interrogations,
and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli. According to
Seymour Hersh, Rumsfeld sanctioned the use of physical coercion
and sexual humiliation to extract information from prisoners. 
Rumsfeld also authorized waterboarding, where the interrogator
induces the sensation of imminent death by drowning. 
Waterboarding is widely considered a form of torture.
Rumsfeld was intimately involved with the interrogation of a
Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Qahtani, at Guantánamo in late
2002. General Geoffrey Miller, who later transferred many of
his harsh interrogation techniques to Abu Ghaib, supervised the
interrogation and gave Rumsfeld weekly updates on his progress. 
During a six-week period, al-Qahtani was stripped naked, forced
to wear women's underwear on his head, denied bathroom access,
threatened with dogs, forced to perform tricks while tethered to
a dog leash, and subjected to sleep deprivation. Al-Qahtani was
kept in solitary confinement for 160 days. For 48 days out of
54, he was interrogated for 18 to 20 hours a day.
Even though Rumsfeld didn't personally carry out the torture and
mistreatment of prisoners, he authorized it. Under the doctrine
of command responsibility, a commander can be liable for war
crimes committed by his inferiors if he knew or should have
known they would be committed and did nothing to stop of prevent
them. The U.S. War Crimes Act provides for prosecution of a
person who commits war crimes and prescribes life imprisonment,
or even the death penalty if the victim dies.
Although intending to signal a new direction in Iraq with his
nomination of Gates to replace Rumsfeld, Bush has no intention of
leaving Iraq. He is building huge permanent U.S. military bases 
there. Gates at the helm of the Defense Department, Bush said,
"can help make the necessary adjustments in our approach." Bush
hopes he can bring congressional Democrats on board by
convincing them he will simply fight a smarter war.
But this war can never get smarter. Nearly 3,000 American
soldiers and more than 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died and tens
of thousands have been wounded. Our national debt has
skyrocketed with the billions Bush has pumped into the war. Now
that there is a new day in Congress, there must be a new push to
end the war. That means a demand that Congress cut off its
funds. And the war criminals must be brought
to justice - beginning with Donald Rumsfeld. 
On November 14, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the
National Lawyers Guild, and other organizations will ask the
German federal prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation 
into the war crimes of Rumsfeld and other Bush administration 
officials. Although Bush has immunized his team from prosecution
in the International Criminal Court, they could be tried in any
country under the well-established principle of universal
jurisdiction. Donald Rumsfeld may be out of
sight, but he will not be out of mind. The
chickens have come home to roost. Marjorie
Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is
president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S.
representative to the executive committee of the American
Association of Jurists. Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways
the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be published this spring
by PoliPointPress. 
http://jurist. law.pitt. edu/forumy/ 2006/11/donald- rumsfeld- war
<http://jurist. law.pitt. edu/forumy/ 2006/11/donald- rumsfeld- war> -
crimes-case. php



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<DIV>Jeff, Nancy, friends,</DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV>When people talk about "another 911 in the making," are they&nbsp;clear that should something terrible go down in the US homeland like a bio- or other-terrrorist attack, the 99 out of 100 times, most likely culprit will be from right-wing forces with allies / training / access within the US armed forces?</DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV>I think these kind of things are called "black operations" but on a smaller scale they are acts committed by agent provacateurs to bring down upon popular movements, government repression.</DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV>By the way, Ned Lamont, by running largely on the single issue of pulling our troops out of Iraq, got 40 percent of the vote! </DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV>Bill Clinton and Baraq Obama refused to campaign for him but he got 40 'effin percent!!!!</DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV><STRONG><EM><U>So the the Democrats</U></EM></STRONG> that refuse to impeach or&nbsp;try the
 paleo-terrorists frequently called neo-cons, or even save our troops by getting them out of Iraq can <STRONG><EM><U>know this fact: </U></EM></STRONG></DIV>  <DIV><STRONG><EM><U></U></EM></STRONG>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV><STRONG><EM><U>40 percent of voters, not merely democrats, will not vote for a pro-war democrat/republican.</U></EM></STRONG></DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV>Linda Haynes from the Kucinich campaign, to her credit, publicly stated she would not vote for the democratic party nominee in her US Congressional district.</DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV><FONT size=3><STRONG><EM>We want our troops home today</EM></STRONG></FONT>, and <FONT size=5>trials</FONT> for the main war-promoters like Lieberman, Clinton, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Bush <FONT size=5>tomorrow</FONT>. </DIV>  <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>  <DIV>We will organize, agitate, and wait until justice is done.</DIV>  <DIV>love, hank</DIV>  <DIV>  <H3>Posted by: "eat each other" <A
 href="http://us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=eateachother@charter.net&amp;Subj= Re%3A%20Rumsfeld%3A%20The%20War%20Crimes%20Case" target=_blank rel=nofollow><FONT color=#003399>eateachother@charter.net </FONT></A>&nbsp; <A href="http://profiles.yahoo.com/letthemeateachother" target=_blank rel=nofollow><FONT color=#003399>letthemeateachother </FONT></A></H3>  <H4>Sat Nov&nbsp;11,&nbsp;2006 3:38&nbsp;pm (PST) </H4>  <DIV class=ygrp-content>The light I noticed was WAY down there at the end of the tunnel,<BR>but I know I saw some.<BR><BR>If I never mentioned, I think our way of life is absolutely<BR>doomed, since we rely on exports to maintain it. I am just happy<BR>we don't have an outright dictatorship. I am also sad, angry and<BR>hateful that we have troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. We will have<BR>to go through hell still, but the fact that enough of these idiot<BR>Americans KNOW better than to trust the Bush team, and are not<BR>into the war in Iraq, not to mention
 interested in social<BR>security, health care, etc. Just the fact that people are<BR>becoming interested is enough to make me hopeful, not that we<BR>will avoid the hardships, but rather to know that there may still<BR>be enough humans who want not to evolve into robot golfers.<BR><BR>cather392000 wrote: Unless, of course, there is "anothe<BR>nineleven" in the making, as we've been warned several times.<BR>For instance, just tonight comes the word of possible nuclear<BR>attack at Watts Bar nuclear facility in Tennessee. Those<BR>"reliable sources" in hig positions have given several warnings <BR>in the last 5 years, all of which received great publicity. Some<BR>think the events are put off or aborted because of information <BR>becoming too general for another false flag to succeed. The<BR>warning from "hig up" is that it is set for 11-11-06. That's <BR>Veterans' Day -- tomorrow -- or rather, today. Time will tell. <BR>Nancy --- In <A
 href="http://us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=PeaceTalkBham%40yahoogroups.com" target=_blank rel=nofollow><FONT color=#003399>PeaceTalkBham@ yahoogroups. com</FONT></A><BR>&lt;mailto:<A href="http://us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=PeaceTalkBham%40yahoogroups.com" target=_blank rel=nofollow><FONT color=#003399>PeaceTalkBham@ yahoogroups. com</FONT></A>&gt; , eat each other <BR>&lt;eateachother@ ...&gt; &lt;mailto:eateachothe r@...&gt; wrote: <BR>And if Rumsfeld is guilty then let us not forget Alberto<BR>Gonzales. (plus I mistakenly left L. Paul<BR>Bremmer off my short list yesterday) As Jack said the<BR>Republicans will try to put it all off on Rumsfeld,<BR>but we should be happy to the onion start to peel, and<BR>public opinion is more and more on the side<BR>of getting the troops out or Iraq, if not Afghanistan. I was<BR>really getting scared there, like we'd never get the <BR>government to stop waterboarding and other torture.<BR>The public would NOT like to
 see a few of<BR>these sessions on tape. I don't think it looks like war<BR>between the Dems and the Repugs now, because they are<BR>all so damn dirty, but at least we may<BR>avoid a fascist dictatorship (MAYBE). I wish we'd hold the<BR>press' feet to the fire for not doing thir job, and<BR>the Dems too, but I do feel a little sigh of relief coming on<BR>that the hearings may finally begin. And<BR>Germany... haha!! Light. Wythe Holt jr. wrote: <BR>Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case By Marjorie Cohn Jurist <BR>November 9, 2006 As the Democrats took control of the House<BR>of Representatives and were on the verge of<BR>taking over the Senate, George W. Bush announced that Donald<BR>Rumsfeld was out and Robert Gates was in as Secretary of <BR>Defense. When Bush is being run out of town, he knows how to get<BR>out in the front of the crowd and make it look like he's leading<BR>the parade. The Rumsfeld-Gates swap is a classic example.<BR>The election was a referendum on the
 war. The dramatic results<BR>prove that the overwhelming majority of people in this country<BR>don't like the disaster Bush has created in Iraq. So rather<BR>than let the airwaves fill up with beaming Democrats and talk of<BR>the horrors of Iraq, Bush changed the subject and fired<BR>Rumsfeld. Now, when the Democrats begin to investigate what<BR>went wrong, Rumsfeld will no longer be the controversial public<BR>face of the war. Rumsfeld had come under fire<BR>from many quarters, not the least of which was<BR>a gaggle of military officers who had been clamoring for his<BR>resignation. Bush said he decided to oust Rumsfeld before <BR>Tuesday's voting but lied to reporters so it wouldn't affect the <BR>election. Putting aside the incredulity of that claim, Bush<BR>likely waited to see if there would be a changing of the<BR>legislative guard before giving Rumsfeld his walking papers. If<BR>the GOP had retained control of Congress, Bush would probably<BR>have retained Rumsfeld.
 But in hindsight, Bush has to wish he<BR>had ejected Rumsfeld before the election to demonstrate a new<BR>direction in the Iraq war to angry voters. <BR>Rumsfeld's sin was not in failing to develop a winning strategy<BR>for Iraq. There is no winning in Iraq, because we never belonged<BR>there in the first place. The war in Iraq is a war of<BR>aggression. It violates the United Nations Charter which only<BR>permits one country to invade another in self-defense or with<BR>the blessing of the Security Council. Donald<BR>Rumsfeld was one of the primary architects of the Iraq<BR>war. On September 15, 2001, in a meeting at Camp David, Rumsfeld<BR>suggested an attack on Iraq because he was deeply worried about<BR>the availability of "good targets in Afghanistan. " Former<BR>Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported that Rumsfeld<BR>articulated his hope to "dissuade" other nations from<BR>"asymmetrical challenges" to U.S. power. Rumsfeld's support for<BR>a preemptive attack on Iraq
 "matched with plans for how the<BR>world's second largest oil reserve might be divided among the<BR>world's contractors made for an irresistible combination, " Ron<BR>Suskind wrote after interviewing O'Neill. <BR>Rumsfeld defensively sought to decouple oil access from regime<BR>change in Iraq when he appeared on CBS News on November 15, 2002.<BR>In a Macbeth moment, Rumsfeld proclaimed the United States' beef<BR>with Iraq has "nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do<BR>with oil." The Secretary doth protest too much.<BR>Prosecuting a war of aggression isn't Rumsfeld's only crime. He<BR>also participated in the highest levels of decision-making that <BR>allowed the extrajudicial execution of several people. Willful <BR>killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, which <BR>constitutes a war crime. In his book, Chain of Command: The Road<BR>from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, Seymour Hersh described the<BR>"unacknowledged" special-access program (SAP) established by
 a<BR>top-secret order Bush signed in late 2001 or early 2002. It<BR>authorized the Defense Department to set up a clandestine team<BR>of Special Forces operatives to defy international law and<BR>snatch, or assassinate, anyone considered a "high-value" Al<BR>Qaeda operative, anywhere in the world. Rumsfeld expanded SAP<BR>into Iraq in August 2003. But Rumsfeld's<BR>crimes don't end there. He sanctioned the use of<BR>torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, which are<BR>grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and thus constitute<BR>war crimes. Rumsfeld approved interrogation techniques that<BR>included the use of dogs, removal of clothing, hooding, stress<BR>positions, isolation for up to 30 days, 20-hour interrogations,<BR>and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli. According to<BR>Seymour Hersh, Rumsfeld sanctioned the use of physical coercion<BR>and sexual humiliation to extract information from prisoners. <BR>Rumsfeld also authorized waterboarding, where
 the interrogator<BR>induces the sensation of imminent death by drowning. <BR>Waterboarding is widely considered a form of torture.<BR>Rumsfeld was intimately involved with the interrogation of a<BR>Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Qahtani, at Guantánamo in late<BR>2002. General Geoffrey Miller, who later transferred many of<BR>his harsh interrogation techniques to Abu Ghaib, supervised the<BR>interrogation and gave Rumsfeld weekly updates on his progress. <BR>During a six-week period, al-Qahtani was stripped naked, forced<BR>to wear women's underwear on his head, denied bathroom access,<BR>threatened with dogs, forced to perform tricks while tethered to<BR>a dog leash, and subjected to sleep deprivation. Al-Qahtani was<BR>kept in solitary confinement for 160 days. For 48 days out of<BR>54, he was interrogated for 18 to 20 hours a day.<BR>Even though Rumsfeld didn't personally carry out the torture and<BR>mistreatment of prisoners, he authorized it. Under the doctrine<BR>of
 command responsibility, a commander can be liable for war<BR>crimes committed by his inferiors if he knew or should have<BR>known they would be committed and did nothing to stop of prevent<BR>them. The U.S. War Crimes Act provides for prosecution of a<BR>person who commits war crimes and prescribes life imprisonment,<BR>or even the death penalty if the victim dies.<BR>Although intending to signal a new direction in Iraq with his<BR>nomination of Gates to replace Rumsfeld, Bush has no intention of<BR>leaving Iraq. He is building huge permanent U.S. military bases <BR>there. Gates at the helm of the Defense Department, Bush said,<BR>"can help make the necessary adjustments in our approach." Bush<BR>hopes he can bring congressional Democrats on board by<BR>convincing them he will simply fight a smarter war.<BR>But this war can never get smarter. Nearly 3,000 American<BR>soldiers and more than 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died and tens<BR>of thousands have been wounded. Our
 national debt has<BR>skyrocketed with the billions Bush has pumped into the war. Now<BR>that there is a new day in Congress, there must be a new push to<BR>end the war. That means a demand that Congress cut off its<BR>funds. And the war criminals must be brought<BR>to justice - beginning with Donald Rumsfeld. <BR>On November 14, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the<BR>National Lawyers Guild, and other organizations will ask the<BR>German federal prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation <BR>into the war crimes of Rumsfeld and other Bush administration <BR>officials. Although Bush has immunized his team from prosecution<BR>in the International Criminal Court, they could be tried in any<BR>country under the well-established principle of universal<BR>jurisdiction. Donald Rumsfeld may be out of<BR>sight, but he will not be out of mind. The<BR>chickens have come home to roost. Marjorie<BR>Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is<BR>president of the
 National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S.<BR>representative to the executive committee of the American<BR>Association of Jurists. Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways<BR>the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be published this spring<BR>by PoliPointPress. <BR><A href="http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/11/donald-rumsfeld-war" target=_blank rel=nofollow><FONT color=#003399>http://jurist. law.pitt. edu/forumy/ 2006/11/donald- rumsfeld- war</FONT></A><BR>&lt;<A href="http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/11/donald-rumsfeld-war" target=_blank rel=nofollow><FONT color=#003399>http://jurist. law.pitt. edu/forumy/ 2006/11/donald- rumsfeld- war</FONT></A>&gt; -<BR>crimes-case. php<BR></DIV></DIV>
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