I don't really care about Rumsfeld.
Posted By: Liberal on 2006-09-01
In Reply to: This is great - can we hold em to it? sm - LVMT
The part about Rumsfeld was actually the only part I disagreed with her about because if Rummy wasn't doing exactly what Bush wanted, Bush would have fired him a long time ago. I believe it's Bush's policies that are the problem. If he fires Rummy, he will only hire someone else that he can hide behind and let take the heat for his failed war scheme.
I loved the pig comment, too. LoL
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The day Rumsfeld resigned. sm
Britney Spears divorce received millions more hits on the net than the news of Rumsfeld's resignation. And the divorce thing was days old. I think that puts into perspective where people's minds are. Rome is burning and this time, a large portion of the American population are fiddling.
Rumsfeld resigning? Anyone else hear this? sm
Replacement supposed to be Bob Gates.
All this said, I agree with you that Cheney, Rumsfeld
and Bush should be punished for what they did. Guards in Abu Ghraib who followed orders were put on trial and imprisoned.
Torture is never justified and brings often useless, coerced confessions and devastating revenge.
Those subjected to physical torture usually conceive undying hatred for their torturers. One must therefore also consider the greater likelihood that American civilians (here or especially abroad) and American troops overseas will be subject to torture (or terror) by aggrieved enemies.'
Keith Olbermann responds to Rumsfeld
One of Keith's best moments, IMO.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/
Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal With Saddam Hussein
Rumsfeld is full of history (among other substances), but he neglected to share this piece of history with the American majority he criticized.
(I suggest Breaking Up Is Hard To Do as the perfect background music for this.)
Published on Thursday, December 8, 2005 by CommonDreams.org |
Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal with Saddam |
by Norman Solomon |
|
Christmas came 11 days early for Donald Rumsfeld two years ago when the news broke that American forces had pulled Saddam Hussein from a spidery hole. During interviews about the capture, on CBS and ABC, the Pentagon's top man was upbeat. And he didn't have to deal with a question that Lesley Stahl or Peter Jennings could have logically chosen to ask: Secretary Rumsfeld, you met with Saddam almost exactly 20 years ago and shook his hand. What kind of guy was he?
Now, Saddam Hussein has gone on trial, but such questions remain unasked by mainstream U.S. journalists. Rumsfeld met with Hussein in Baghdad on behalf of the Reagan administration, opening up strong diplomatic and military ties that lasted through six more years of Saddam's murderous brutality.
As it happens, the initial trial of Saddam and co-defendants is focusing on grisly crimes that occurred the year before Rumsfeld gripped his hand. The first witness, Ahmad Hassan Muhammad, 38, riveted the courtroom with the scenes of torture he witnessed after his arrest in 1982, including a meat grinder with human hair and blood under it, the New York Times reported Tuesday. And: At one point, Mr. Muhammad briefly broke down in tears as he recalled how his brother was tortured with electrical shocks in front of their 77-year-old father.
The victims were Shiites -- 143 men and adolescent boys, according to the charges -- tortured and killed in the Iraqi town of Dujail after an assassination attempt against Saddam in early July of 1982. Donald Rumsfeld became the Reagan administration's Middle East special envoy 15 months later.
On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving U.S. relations with that country. A couple of days later, the New York Times cited a senior American official who said that the United States remained ready to establish full diplomatic relations with Iraq and that it was up to the Iraqis.
On March 29, 1984, the Times reported: American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name. Washington had some goodies for Saddam's regime, the Times account noted, including agricultural-commodity credits totaling $840 million. And while no results of the talks have been announced after the Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad three months earlier, Western European diplomats assume that the United States now exchanges some intelligence on Iran with Iraq.
A few months later, on July 17, 1984, a Times article with a Baghdad dateline sketchily filled in a bit more information, saying that the U.S. government granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years. The story recalled that Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi president here, and the dispatch mentioned in passing that State Department human rights reports have been uniformly critical of the Iraqi President, contending that he ran a police state.
Full diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad were restored 11 months after Rumsfeld's December 1983 visit with Saddam. He went on to use poison gas later in the decade, actions which scarcely harmed relations with the Reagan administration.
As the most senior U.S. official to visit Iraq in six years, Rumsfeld had served as Reagan's point man for warming relations with Saddam. In 1984, the administration engineered the sale to Baghdad of 45 ostensibly civilian-use Bell 214ST helicopters. Saddam's military found them quite useful for attacking Kurdish civilians with poison gas in 1988, according to U.S. intelligence sources. In response to the gassing, journalist Jeremy Scahill has pointed out, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most U.S. technology. The measure was killed by the White House.
The USA's big media institutions did little to illuminate how Washington and business interests combined to strengthen and arm Saddam Hussein during many of his worst crimes. In the 1980s and afterward, the United States underwrote 24 American corporations so they could sell to Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction, which he used against Iran, at that time the prime Middle Eastern enemy of the United States, writes Ben Bagdikian, a former assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, in his book The New Media Monopoly. Hussein used U.S.-supplied poison gas against Iranians and Kurds while the United States looked the other way.
Of course the crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were not just in the future when Rumsfeld came bearing gifts in 1983. Saddam's large-scale atrocities had been going on for a long time. Among them were the methodical torture and murders in Dujail that have been front-paged this week in coverage of the former dictator's trial; they occurred 17 months before Rumsfeld arrived in Baghdad.
Today, inside the corporate media frame, history can be supremely relevant when it focuses on Hussein's torture and genocide. But the historic assistance of the U.S. government and American firms is largely off the subject and beside the point.
A photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand on Dec. 20, 1983, is easily available. (It takes a few seconds to find via Google.) But the picture has been notably absent from the array of historic images that U.S. media outlets are providing to viewers and readers in coverage of the Saddam Hussein trial. And journalistic mention of Rumsfeld's key role in aiding the Iraqi tyrant has been similarly absent. Apparently, in the world according to U.S. mass media, some history matters profoundly and some doesn't matter at all.
Norman Solomon is the author of the new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com. |
Germany seek charges against Rumsfeld for prison abuse sm
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
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.
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. Karpinski who the lawyers say will be in Germany next week to publicly address her accusations in the case has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld .
A spokesperson for the Pentagon told TIME there would be no comment since the case has not yet been filed.
Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenet, the other defendants in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Senior military officers named in the filing are General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top Army official in Iraq; Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantanamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski; and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib.
Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides universal jurisdiction allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world. Indeed, a similar, but narrower, legal action was brought in Germany in 2004, which also sought the prosecution of Rumsfeld. The case provoked an angry response from Pentagon, and Rumsfeld himself was reportedly upset. Rumsfeld's spokesman at the time, Lawrence DiRita, called the case a a big, big problem. U.S. officials made clear the case could adversely impact U.S.-Germany relations, and Rumsfeld indicated he would not attend a major security conference in Munich, where he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, unless Germany disposed of the case. The day before the conference, a German prosecutor announced he would not pursue the matter, saying there was no indication that U.S. authorities and courts would not deal with allegations in the complaint.
In bringing the new case, however, the plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the German prosecutor's reasoning for rejecting the previous case that U.S. authorities were dealing with the issue has been proven wrong.
The utter and complete failure of U.S. authorities to take any action to investigate high-level involvement in the torture program could not be clearer, says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a U.S.-based non-profit helping to bring the legal action in Germany. He also notes that the Military Commissions Act, a law passed by Congress earlier this year, effectively blocks prosecution in the U.S. of those involved in detention and interrogation abuses of foreigners held abroad in American custody going to back to Sept. 11, 2001. As a result, Ratner contends, the legal arguments underlying the German prosecutor's previous inaction no longer hold up.
Whatever the legal merits of the case, it is the latest example of efforts in Western Europe by critics of U.S. tactics in the war on terror to call those involved to account in court. In Germany, investigations are under way in parliament concerning cooperation between the CIA and German intelligence on rendition the kidnapping of suspected terrorists and their removal to third countries for interrogation. Other legal inquiries involving rendition are under way in both Italy and Spain.
U.S. officials have long feared that legal proceedings against war criminals could be used to settle political scores. In 1998, for example, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet whose military coup was supported by the Nixon administration was arrested in the U.K. and held for 16 months in an extradition battle led by a Spanish magistrate seeking to charge him with war crimes. He was ultimately released and returned to Chile. More recently, a Belgian court tried to bring charges against then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for alleged crimes against Palestinians.
For its part, the Bush Administration has rejected adherence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on grounds that it could be used to unjustly prosecute U.S. officials. The ICC is the first permanent tribunal established to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Germany, who killed millions of Jews wants to prosecute Rumsfeld.
That makes sense.
who could possibly care? War, financial ruin, health care needs.
nm
Well, I care. I also care about the constitution.nm
nm
I don't really care. sm
It just seems it has been carried on long enough. I would rather just debate. It sounds more like a grudge, but as I said, just my 2 cents.
I don't really care!!! SM
All of you all need to stay over here and try and find some topics to discuss like is happening tonight.
Do you think I care what you think of me? sm
Get over yourself. Grow up. Learn how to behave on an adult chat board. Stop lying. You are such a liar. I mean, lying all over the place. It's really terrible. You need help.
How does it feel?
I don't care about that. sm
That is insignificant to what is going on in the world right now.
I don't care either
Just pointing out what a fool you are making of yourself in talking about things you have absolutely no clue about, but if it's a fool you want to be so be it. At least you're a good source of laughs for those of us living in reality.
Liberal church--that's an oxymoron isn't it?
Man, that was very Coulter of me.
And I care...not! nm
x
why do you even care?
Would you prefer to punish the child she is carrying by offering no prenatal care? Would you sleep better if that woman went back to Mexico where her baby will receive no care at all? Did you ever stop to think that someone in your family was once an immigrant? Illegals don't pay taxes? If they work, they have taxes taken out of of their check and that is free money to the government that they are not eligible to ever collect once they are old.
Republicans are going to want to keep the illegals here to benefit big business (cheap labor) and democrats are going to want to help them, so either way, nothing will be done.
Why do I care?
You know why I care? Because me along with my husband work our a**** off to make it. When I got accidentally pregnant at the age of 20 and had no ins. do you think Medicaid paid for me to have my baby? NO!! I didn't qualify because my husband made too much and believe me you don't have to make much to make TOO much. Well we worked our asses off and took on the responsibility for what had happened and paid for our baby. Nobody GAVE me nothing! And I am a citizen here. She does nothing but milks the system. And no taxes are not held out of her check where she works. I guess it is called contract labor. I don't know. She is ILLEGAL! Why hasn't she been shipped back to MEXICO? Our country is having to close hospitals because of people like HER!! That is why I care. Our country is going to h*** in a hurry. And it is people like you who say well what about prenatal care for the poor little illegal Mexican? If I hadn't had the money to pay for my prenatal care, guess what? I wouldn't have had any. It is not our country's responsibility to take care of every 3rd world person who comes over here for their handout. We have American citizens who can't even get benefits when truth be known some do need them. They can't get them but you let a d*** illegal Mexican stroll up in there and the world stops to kiss their a**. Hundreds of years ago someone in my family was an immigrant but they didn't sneak and scam to get what they had. They worked and did it the right way.
Cheap labor? What do you mean cheap labor?? These illegals come over here and they don't want our cheap jobs, they want the good ones Americans need. Makes my blood boil!
I should care what you think?
Not in the slightest. I don't care that you think I'm ignorant and I don't care if you don't like my posts.
Then why do you think any of us care what
?
I don't care what you think....sm
But some intelligent posters (on both sides) do care what the military on the ground, over in Iraq and Afgahanistan, how they truly think and feel.
Not just what the media feeds you.
I care what the troops on the ground, themselves, think and feel.
And let me say again...No....I don't care what you think, as obviously you don't think much at all. All you do is attack.
Kaydie was right. All that a couple of you of you dems on this do is attack, attack, attack....what children you are.
still don't care
just because she is on the committee of anything, doesn't make her opinion any better than mine.
I care very much for how this came to be. sm
To be able to fix this, we need to understand where it started, who started it, who continued it, who tried to fix it but were stopped (I think it was 12 times Bush tried to pass legislation to help, and dems shot him down each time...but no, we don't hear about that, do we), it's important which candidates now had a hand in it, which ones still do, which ones are blaming the wrong people.
It goes on and on.
Give me Republican names that contributed to this, and I will condemn them just as much. Give me Republican names of CEOs and fat cats on Wall Street who perpetuated this fraud, and I care if they did.
The truth is, there are a few Republicans that stood in the way, as well, but the dems far outweigh them, and when they had many, many changes to fix this before it occurred, they did nothing to help it.
And just today, the main players in this mess, Sen. Dodd et al., pontificate and blast everyone but themselves in a Senate haring, when they are the very ones, on the very committees and oversight, that did next to nothing, except line their own pockets.
That to me, is a disgrace, and disgusting.
Yes, I care very, very much about who did this, and how it happened. It matters.
And the only thing that will be remembered, is that it happened under Bush, and he will be blamed for all of it.
The dems will be given a free pass, yet again.
And we care what you think?
I care what everybody thinks, that's how I learn. Unfortunately, I think your thinking is wrong, nothing wrong with disagreeing. Obama needs to be honest about his past, his entire past, and everything he has had his hands in. Something is not right with him.
whatever you say. i could care less what you think.
I know what I know, and that's good enough for me. I do get tired of the race card being dropped constantly. I'm Italian, & my kin were treated horribly for many years. I never heard them crying "racism."
My closest girlfriend is a Jew, and she says Obama is anti-semetic. I believe it, too. But she doesn't go around crying in her milk. It is what it is. Check out frontpagemag.com. David Horowitz has been treated horribly, esp. since he went from being D to R.
Get over it, already.
Sam, try as you may, they don't care.
I have posted almost ver batim what you just posted and they never have anything to say back. They just start going on about Palin this and Palin that or some ridiculous stuff they just heard on their TV.
They just don't get that Obama will run what businesses we have overseas, which is where he really wants them. That way he will have government run businesses and can take over everything for us, the poor little citizens. They don't get that the average businesses will go under, including the very ones who employ their family members because they will not be able to afford all the MANDATES and policies Obama will stuff down their throat. They will lay off people by the thousands and the unemployment rate will soar, but they just don't get it.
They hear "free money" and they actually believe all that money will come from BIG businesses, those RICH HORRIBLE BUSINESSES that employ everyone. Those businesses will go overseas to where they don't pay high taxes or the ones that do stay will just pass on their higher taxes to us, who in essence will be paying the taxes for them.
They just don't get it!
I don't really care
if he is from Mars, he is wrong for this country wherever he is from
I really don't care how many or how much -
I do not want to spend my money helping somebody else sit on their butt, while I am sitting on mine trying my darndest to make a living and barely getting by - I am tired of bailing out everybody because they did not make good decisions!
The only bad decision I made was to become a transcriptionist. While my job is going downhill, I am going to school to be able to do something else and not sitting on my butt for 2 or more years drawing a check for doing nothing - I am taking care of myself. Those auto workers can do the same darn thing!!!
I don't have enough money to keep giving to other people to get by - I need it myself!
I don't care if its before or after
Since its a little late in the game (he should have been impeached a long time ago) I don't care if he is impeached now or if he is arrested for war crimes after he leaves office. The boy needs to go to jail and pay for what he did. But you are right, there are more pressing issues on our plate.
Bill Clinton was impeached. He truly truly deserved to be impeached. He lied to the American people (forget the Lewinski issue - I could care less about her). He lied to us. Sat there in front of the camera and lied. And he lied to the congress. Lied under oath. How can you trust a leader or commander in chief who lies?
As for the dems not holding grudges. You are lumping them all into one category. Some don't hold grudges and others do. Just like conservatives. Some hold grudges and some don't. It's not right to praise one group and say they are all angels while people demonize everyone on the other side (both sides do this).
I think if in the future children are asked to write a paper listing all the reasons Bush qualified for impeachment, they better start at the beginning of the term because its going to take the whole term to finish the paper. However, hopefully their paper will be titled "Why Bush should have been impeached but jailed instead after leaving office".
I care. If he gets away with it, then let's just have
his sons then run for President of the US. Heck, let's just have everyone run for President of the US.
I do care, BUT..
It doesn't seem logical to me that he could have come as far as he has in the political process if his origin of birth was truly in question. The abstract I saw of his BC on the Internet didn't look particularly official, but it hardly proves anything one way or the other.
I agree that SOMEONE would have brought the truth to light a long time ago if there was any question of his being legally eligible to become prez.
I think we're grasping at straws here.
I Care
I care because Bristol Palin and the baby daddy were used as props by the GOP and the McCain campaign, and that makes them fair game. They lied about their getting married, and I'm just waiting to see what else they lied about.
What you should care about,,,
Instead of crucifying a teenage girl for making a mistake thousands of other teenage girls make every year, why don't you spend a little time finding out what lies Obama spread on the campaign trail like so many truckloads of manure?
Or are you more interested in tabloid fodder than truth?
Yeah. I thought so.
He does not have to care
He was never in the military and has no experience, unlike Bush and McCain.
Do you really think they care?
It is not like losing you as an investor is going to matter one iota to anyone on Wall Street.
I don't care who you are
the brown envelope post was funny! Lighten up!
I could care less what either of them look like...(sm)
But I do think that Hillary is doing an awesome job as Sec of State!!
Not that they care...
....'We keep you alive to row this ship. So row well, and live.' (Roman general on the galley to Heston in Ben Hur.)
For those that care..........
Thank goodness for Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) who wants to add an amendment to the constitution to protect parents' rights. If you understand what Obama wants for your children, then you better listen up folks! This is a doozy! Obama now thinks the United Nations should decide what "rights" your child has, not the parents' rights over their child, but the child..... oh yea, for those that are wondering, Obama has already said he thinks it's a great idea that the UN should have the right to interfere in our "sovereign" country's rights to tell us how to raise our children.
For all those that think Obama is wonderful, you think the United Nations should tell you how to "not" take care of your child? And for you that care, Obama thinks it is "embarrassing" that we have not jumped on that bandwagon yet and of course, "he" will "review this", which means your rights as a parent will be gone. The United Nations will decide for you how to raise your child.
And tell me why should I care?
Not something that affects me.
so what do you care?
xx
why would you care?
@
And we should care because.....?
Who cares if it's a he or a she, or what name he/she posts under.
If you don't like his/her posts, move on.
OMG, I really do not care, before or after.....LOL......nm
nm
This for just those that really care about their
http://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusablog/beckr/june-12-2009/look-their-names-they-voted-today-keep-americans-jobless-so-multitudes-i?jid=170650&lid=9&rid=1689&tid=689129
They don't care how terrorist's think...
They'd have to read what Middle Eastern experts - you know, people who have lived in or are from the Middle East would have to say. That would involve critical THINKING. Bush flaunted repeatedly the fact that he never consulted anyone about the situation in the Middle East before going to war. The only folks he consulted were...you guessed it - Rummy, Wolfy and the gang.
I will continue to care for the little guy
Well, you go ahead and defend big corporations and the rich..frankly, they could not care about you one bit. I will continue to care for the middle class, the poor, the disadvantaged.
Who says I don't care... I am simply saying
that the rich are not evil, which you seem to paint them as. In fact, a lot of philanthropy comes from the rich. College scholarships, donations, etc. We are not all the same and we cannot all be the same and we never will be the same. How about instead of pity for those less fortunate, let's encourage them to be self-sufficient? This is the LAND OF OPPORTUNITY and there will always be a segment of society who will not pull themselves up in spite of all the opportunities available. I can't spend a lot of time worrying about that because it futile.
No, what I don't care for is people who won't own up to what they said.
Other than that, no problemo bucko!
Psst...they don't care
everytime there's a camera at a governmental function they think they have every right to come and protest nevermind if there are rules of decorum in places like the capitol building. The modern protester is always looking for face time on the camera. This was yet another way for Cindy S. to draw attention to herself, and she succeeded in showing how off the mark she is how she has drifted into the realm of sociopathic behavior.
I don't care either way. Don't try and make this something it isn't. nm
Oh and I really DON'T care what he thinks. sm
I mean none of us really should, liberal or conservative. I don't know about you, but as I hit the middle ages of my life, I have way more to worry about than what some overpaid actor thinks about anything. It just isn't real h igh on my list of things I care about. Now that I am back in school, and really struggling to find a career that will last me the rest of my life, I have even less time for things like this.
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