Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld In Germany Over Prison Abuse

[BaneBlade]

This is not political grandstanding, our government has nothing to do with it. The ex-detainees are using the rights they have here, it's not initiated by government officials.

 

[Stegyre]

This is not political grandstanding, our government has nothing to do with it. The ex-detainees are using the rights they have here, it's not initiated by government officials.

When I opine that it is "political grandstanding," I do not mean to imply that the government has anything to do with promoting it (other than the passage of a law purporting to grant "universal jurisdiction," that is).

It is the plaintiffs who are grandstanding: they are initiating (or attempting to initiate - I claim no significant knowledge of the workings of the German court system) a judicial proceeding that is fundamentally incapable of achieving a useful judicial result (a judgment that has any possibility of being enforced/collected).

All that they can get is a piece of paper saying that they are right and Rumsfeld (who never appears and has no involvement in the proceeding) is wrong. That's the grandstanding.

Imho, its an abuse of the judicial system - anyone's judicial system - and a wise judge would shut it down early.

 

[Riesstiu IV]

Perhaps Rumsfeld is German...

 

[Esckey]

Nothing is going to happen. The states refue to change and accept accountabilty for.....well pretty much anything really, so why bother pressing charges against any americian?

 

[jameson]

Any indictment or conviction won't have any effect whatsoever as long as Rumsfeld stays within the USA. Once he travels abroad, though, all bets are off. Just look at the Pinochet saga for example.
Ideally the US would recognize that abuses like at Abu Ghraib can't be dealt with by merely prosecuting soldiers at the level of private or specialist and letting anyone above that level get off scot-free, and look at the people under whose responsibility the abuses took place. IIRC Ron Suskind ( author of The one percent solution) claimed that rougher interrogation methods - what most people outside the USA conceive of as torture - were authorized directly by Rumsfeld and in some cases even by Bush. Unless and until this gets investigated properly by the American Justice Department, I can almost live with properly constituted courts outside of the US trying them for that.

 

[QuoVadisNation]

That wikipedia article on universal jurisdiction is funny..

The only international law is behaviorist. As in, might equals right.

 

[JollyRoger]

What would happen if a foreign government's equivalent of the CIA kidnapped Rummy and sent him to another country for, uh, "interrogation" and then sent him and his "confessions" to Germany? The U.S. government would have to respect those methods - or at least sue for patent infringement.

 

[woody60707]

What would happen if a foreign government's equivalent of the CIA kidnapped Rummy and sent him to another country for, uh, "interrogation" and then sent him and his "confessions" to Germany? The U.S. government would have to respect those methods - or at least sue for patent infringement.

You ask for a "foreign government's equivalent", well what government is claiming that we have their people and are holding them unjustly?

 

[neutrino]

what the US government should have done as soon as the military actions started taking place in Afghanistan was to declare terrorist/militant suspects as POWs and thereby under the jurisdiction of the military court. civilian courts, attorneys and civil-rights organisations should be barred.

(on the other hand, no US congress has ever declared war since 1941. undeclared war = invites civilian interference.)

 

[HawkeyeGS]

As if the U.S. would let one of its citizens be locked up in a foreign jail....oh wait.

 

[DBear]

The following editorial ran in the Quincy Herald-Whig today. Unfortunately, you have to be a subscriber to view it online, so I'll quote from the print edition:

Forum for vendettas

German prosecution of Rumsfeld trivializes nature of war crimes

A GROUP of German and U.S. civil-rights lawyers this week asked German prosecutors to open a war-crimes investigation into the actions of outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 11 other U.S. officials.

German law allows the pursuit of war crimes cases regardless of where they occur. A similar attempt to prosecute Rumsfeld in Germany two years ago failed.

Rumsfeld and the others are alleged to have ordered or condoned war crimes at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, arguably two of this nation's more woeful moments. The failings of these two institutions have hardly been ignored by the American press, courts and Congress, though some may feel that punishment fell short and senior officials were shielded.

Those advancing this latest effort in Germany trivialize the nature of war crimes and do an injustice to the victims of ethnic cleansing, genocide and other acts of calculated savagery.

Would that these same activists show similar enthusiasm for pursuing the world's dictators, but the United States is too easy a target, and unlike Iran, for example, we are unlikely to send assassins aftter them.

The attempted prosecution in Germany seems less to do with war crimes than opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and a visceral dislike of the Bush administration. And if German courts decline to prosecute? "If we fail here, we will try in France, or in Spain," lawyer Wolfgang Kalek said. "We want to show that there will be no safe haven anywhere in the world for him (Rumsfeld)."

And they wonder why Americans feel that an international criminal court would be a forum for vendettas against the United States."

Note--this is far from being a right-wing paper. They endorsed Blowhardevich for Illinois governor, fer gawd's sake. But this editorial is spot on and captures the mood of this American.