Continuing Coverup of Prisoner Torture by USA
The matter of the torture of prisoners by the US keeps arising in a variety of forums. The surprisingly high number of 36 Senators voting today against the nomination of Alberto Gonzales is largely attributable to his and the White House refusing to provide requested information to the Senate about the role Gonzales played in the promulgation of the US torture policy. He is known to be the author of the lead memorandum on the subject but claimed in his Senate testimony he could not remember much of anything else about the issue and even if he could, that it would be classsifed information or subject to some previously unheard of offshoot of the executive privilege doctrine.
The soldier who was convicted by court martial of prisoner abuse wanted to have everyone above him in the chain of command required to testify as to the actual torture policy, but they all asserted their privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. If the Army really wanted to get to the truth, they would have put appropriate pressure of these higher ups to get them to testify or resign.
Because of the Holocaust experience, Germany has laws allowing prosecution of persons accused of war crimes, regardless of national boundaries. War crimes charges are being sought in Germany against Don Rumsfeld, and for that reason he will not be making the customary appearance at the international security conference there next week. Such charges could not be brought in the International Criminal Court, because the US is not a member nation of that Court, out of concern that US officials or personnel might be charged with international crimes and not have the right to a trial in US Courts. What kind of a nation member of the world community is the US, when it will not let alleged US criminals be tried in the Court of the international community and when it imprisons citizens of other nations and tortures them and does not even let them have a US trial?
On the Larry King show, Rumsfeld just siad he offered to resign twice. He should have - once for misfeasance and once for malfeasance.
The soldier who was convicted by court martial of prisoner abuse wanted to have everyone above him in the chain of command required to testify as to the actual torture policy, but they all asserted their privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. If the Army really wanted to get to the truth, they would have put appropriate pressure of these higher ups to get them to testify or resign.
Because of the Holocaust experience, Germany has laws allowing prosecution of persons accused of war crimes, regardless of national boundaries. War crimes charges are being sought in Germany against Don Rumsfeld, and for that reason he will not be making the customary appearance at the international security conference there next week. Such charges could not be brought in the International Criminal Court, because the US is not a member nation of that Court, out of concern that US officials or personnel might be charged with international crimes and not have the right to a trial in US Courts. What kind of a nation member of the world community is the US, when it will not let alleged US criminals be tried in the Court of the international community and when it imprisons citizens of other nations and tortures them and does not even let them have a US trial?
On the Larry King show, Rumsfeld just siad he offered to resign twice. He should have - once for misfeasance and once for malfeasance.
posted by Tom Blake | 7:43 PM
1 Comments:
Rumsfeld was able to attend the conference in Germany this week, because the German prosecutors decided not to pursue war criminal charges against him.
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