What a damn, dirty disgrace!

I doubt if any of you will be surprised by this but, not only have we been illegally detaining would-be terrorists in Guantanamo, we’ve also been detaining many with no links to terrorism what’so-ever.

McClatchy reporters have been on the case these past eight months. Their findings are bound to bring about a stinging rebuke to the pro-war Bush administration.

(H/T: Mirth)

Visit McClatchy for more on this story and to watch the video.

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None of these rat bastards will ever pay.

The Paris prosecutors’ office has dismissed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld accusing the former U.S. defense secretary of torture, human rights groups who brought the case said on Friday.

The plaintiffs, who included the French-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) and the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said Rumsfeld had authorized interrogation techniques that led to rights abuses.

The FIDH said it had received a letter from the prosecutors’ office ruling that Rumsfeld benefited from a “customary” immunity from prosecution granted to heads of state and government and foreign ministers, even after they left office.

It said in a statement it was “astonished at such a mistaken argument” and said customary immunity from prosecution did not exist under international law.

More at Reuters

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The Washington Post has an article in today’s paper about Donald Rumsfeld’s memos, or “snowflakes” as they are called. Sometimes he’d send out 20 to 60 snowflakes a day.

From some of Rumsfeld’s “snowflakes”

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Dennis Kucinich questions Rumsfeld at today’s hearing.

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By ERICA WERNER

WASHINGTON - Ex-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top former Pentagon brass denied any cover-up and rejected personal responsibility Wednesday for the military’s bungled response to Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s friendly-fire death in Afghanistan.

“I know that I would not engage in a cover-up. I know that no one in the White House suggested such a thing to me. I know that the gentlemen sitting next to me are men of enormous integrity and would not participate in something like that,” Rumsfeld told a House committee.

It was Rumsfeld’s first public appearance on Capitol Hill since President Bush replaced him with Robert Gates late last year. At a hearing he reiterated previous testimony to investigators that he didn’t have early knowledge that Tillman was cut down on April 22, 2004, by fellow Rangers, not by enemy militia as was initially claimed.

read more HERE

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I read yesterday he declined the “invitation” to testify. I guess he is going to show up. This hearing will air on C-Span3. You can watch it online here.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to testify Wednesday before a House hearing on the friendly-fire death of Army Ranger Cpl. Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld is expected to appear along with Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. John Abizaid, former chief of U.S. Central Command; and Gen. Bryan Douglas Brown, former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. All of the generals are now retired.

Also invited to testify was Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, whom the secretary of the Army censured Tuesday for his handling of the military’s investigation into Tillman’s death.

Army Secretary Pete Geren also ordered a grade-review board to consider whether Kensinger should be stripped of a star.

Kensinger’s appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing was not confirmed, and The Associated Press reported that his attorney said Kensinger was away on business.

“He declined the committee invitation to testify two weeks ago, so it was no surprise to the committee that he had no intent to participate in a hearing that is all about show and no substance,” attorney Charles W. Gittins said in an e-mail to the AP.

More at CNN

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from Reuters

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales won American newspaper columnists‘ annual “Sitting Duck Award” for being an easy target.

“This is our way of saying thanks for the low-hanging fruit,” said Samantha Bennett, vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist.

Gonzales was widely ridiculed for his appearance before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in April to answer questions about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys amid accusations they had been dismissed for political reasons.

Asked to explain his role in the firings, Gonzales said, “I don’t recall” or “I have no recollection” 64 times, inviting criticism from even Republican senators, one of whom, Tom Coburn, called for his resignation.

Mike Argento, president of the society, explained Gonzales’ selection, “We gave it to him but we can’t remember why.”

The Justice Department did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment on Monday.

Previous winners have included political commentator Ann Coulter, who was recognized in 2006 for “cheapening political discourse in America” and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2004.

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How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.

by Seymour M. Hersh
from The New Yorker

On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found:

Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse.

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant. Craddock’s daughter had been a babysitter for Taguba’s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, “Craddock just said, very coldly, A-Wait here.- ” In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba-of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, A-That’s not abuse. That’s torture.- There was quiet.”

Rumsfeld was particularly concerned about how the classified report had become public. “General,” he asked, “who do you think leaked the report?” Taguba responded that perhaps a senior military leader who knew about the investigation had done so. “It was just my speculation,” he recalled. “Rumsfeld didn-t say anything.” (I did not meet Taguba until mid-2006 and obtained his report elsewhere.) Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed. “Here I am,” Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, “just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this.” As Rumsfeld spoke, Taguba said, “He’s looking at me. It was a statement.”

read more at THE NEW YORKER

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Germany’s federal prosecutor announced she will not be proceeding with an investigation against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA Director George Tenet, and other high-ranking U.S. officials for torture and other war crimes committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantnamo, according to a press release obtained by RAW STORY.

“The 400-page complaint was filed on November 14, 2006, by Berlin attorney Wolfgang Kaleck on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Republican Attorneys’ Association (RAV), more than 40 other international and national human rights groups, 12 Iraqi citizens who were held in Abu Ghraib, and one Saudi citizen still held at Guantnamo,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) press release continues.

CCR president Michael Ratner told the Associated Press in a telephone call from New York, “If Germany is not willing to enforce their law we think other countries will be - we’re not going to leave a stone unturned.”

“It took 35 years to get (former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto) Pinochet and it won’t take that long with the Rumsfeld case,” Ratner added. “I think everyone recognizes that high-level U.S. officials ran a torture program around the world.”

Read more and follow the links provided by RAW STORY

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(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

The Washington Post’s Peter Eisner reports on the front page today (4/3/07):

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous — later retracted — 16 words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush’s remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

Read more »

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Too friggin bad!

From SFGate.com

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cannot be tried on allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.

The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

“Despite the horrifying torture allegations,” Hogan wrote, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented.

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Berkeley has become the first public entity in the United States to endorse the possibility of prosecuting former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Germany for war crimes, but the liberal city balked at joining the case as a co-plaintiff.

The City Council early Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution supporting a criminal prosecution being sought in Germany against Rumsfeld and his associates in connection with torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons.

After some debate, the council — on the advice of the city manager and city attorney — modified the original resolution from the Peace and Justice Commission, which called for Berkeley to join about three dozen international nonprofits as co-plaintiffs.

The council was advised that city staff did not have the time or expertise to take on a German legal matter and that Berkeley might expose itself to financial or legal liability by joining the suit, which was filed under Germany’s universal human rights jurisdiction.

The compromise resolution refrains from making Berkeley a co-plaintiff, but expands the city’s support for the German suit to “any tribunal with jurisdiction over the matter, whether such legal proceedings are pursued in this country or abroad.”

“We sent a very strong progressive message that at least one American city is willing to stand up to the Bush administration,” said Councilman Kriss Worthington. “And we did not risk taxpayers’ money by becoming a co-plaintiff. So it was progressive and prudent.”

Continue reading at SFGate

More about the case here

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Ten bucks says George Soros’s financial records are scrutinized on a daily basis.

Pentagon, CIA, spying on financial records of Americans

Washington, Jan 14 (DPA) In the latest revelation about the expanding investigative reach of the US government, the New York Times reported that the US military and CIA have been spying on the banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and foreigners.

The two agencies, which are barred by law from conducting domestic law enforcement work, have been issuing documents known as national security letters to American companies to obtain financial records on individuals suspected of terrorism or other crimes.
…

After the Sep 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld directed military lawyers and intelligence officials to see how they could expand their intelligence collection inside and outside the US. They have cited a 1978 US law, The Right to Financial Privacy Act, as allowing government access to banking data using the letters.

The Times cited two examples where the military used the letters - one was a government contractor with unexpected wealth, another was a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorist suspects.

The practice demonstrates the fine line that democratic governments walk during wartime in guarding civil liberties - a line that many critics feel has been crossed too often since the terrorist attacks.
…

‘They are moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating,’ (Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former lawyer at the NSA and the CIA) said.

Source: EARTHtimes.org

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May these rat bastards rot in hell, if not in a prison cell here on earth. The damage they have caused to our country hasn’t even begun to be felt yet.

WASHINGTON - FBI agents documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at the [tag]Guantanamo Bay[/tag] military base, including one detainee whose head was wrapped in duct tape for chanting the Quran and another who pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.

Documents released Tuesday by the FBI offered new details about the harsh interrogation practices used by military officials and contractors when questioning so-called enemy combatants.

The reports describe a female guard who detainees said handled their genitals and wiped menstrual blood on their face. Another interrogator reportedly bragged to an FBI agent about dressing as a Catholic priest and “baptizing” a prisoner.

Some military officials and contractors told FBI agents that the interrogation techniques had been approved by the Defense Department, including directly by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The documents were released in response to a public records request by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing Rumsfeld and others on behalf of former military detainees who say they were abused. Many of the incidents in the FBI documents already have been reported and are summarized in the ACLU’s lawsuit.

Read more at The Register-Guard

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Dan Froomkin of White House Briefing and Nieman Watchdog makes it look deceptively easy. He’s a blogger’s blogger, offering a wide-ranging, comprehensive round-up of political news along with trenchant, no-BS analysis most weekdays of the year. He’s also a tireless advocate of accountability, champions all the positive aspects of the blogosphere, and has significantly aided the popularity of WashingtonPost.com (he’s also very good about returning e-mails).

His column from 12/20/06, “White House Year in Review: Bush Loses His Parade,” recaps many of his best columns of 2006, thus serving as a valuable resource for digging up articles on key events and figures of the previous year. I already highlighted one of my favorite Froomkin columns, “Bush’s Imaginary Foes,” in a post called “Dance of the Straw Men.”

Also on 12/20/06, Froomkin participated in his last discussion of the calendar year. Since he had asked readers about their favorite columns of the year, I dashed off a quick comment (which is the last comment of the chat, but not listed below). I found myself much more intrigued by the following interchanges.
Read more »

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