Gary Younge (The Guardian): Calls for resignation are meaningless

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Guardian Unlimited (London)
Dated Monday May 1

Calls for resignation are meaningless without any changes in policy
The Guantánamo abuses wouldn't stop were Donald Rumsfeld to go - politicians must be made accountable in other ways
By Gary Younge

If the war on terror is a plan to preserve and promote the values of the civilised world against barbarism, then nobody told Mohammed al-Kahtani. Since Kahtani has been incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay, he has been stripped naked and straddled by a taunting female guard, made to wear knickers on his head and a bra, and told that his mother was a whore. He has been shaved, held on a leash and forced to bark like a dog, put in isolation for five months in a cell continuously flooded with artificial light, deprived of heat, treated to a fake kidnapping and pumped with large quantities of intravenous liquids without access to a toilet so that he urinated on himself.

"Just for the lack of a camera, it would sure look like Abu Ghraib," a military investigator, Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt, told the army inspector general in 2005, referring to Guantánamo.

But unlike Abu Ghraib, responsibility for Kahtani's abuse could not be dumped on a group of working-class part-timers. According to sworn statements by Schmidt that were obtained by Salon.com, the US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, was "personally involved" in Kahtani's interrogation and spoke every week with the Guantánamo commander involved. Schmidt did not believe that Rumsfeld authorised the methods used against Kahtani, but he did argue that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld pursued had created the conditions for the abuse to take place.

As George Bush reshuffles his cabinet in an attempt to resuscitate the flagging fortunes of his second term, Rumsfeld's position looks safe. But until recently he was the weakest link. A posse of retired generals joined forces to torpedo his political career. They never mentioned Kahtani. Instead, they slammed Rumsfeld for "his absolute failures in managing the war", for "ignoring the advice of seasoned officers", for "a casualness and swagger" that had "alienated his allies".

Read more.

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. Well written article,

but sadly, it points out no more than we already recognize as the truth.

The author is absolutely correct that Rumsfeld should be indicted for war crimes, but will that day ever come? :::sigh:::


<snip>

By all accounts, the Saudi national is no angel. Described by military investigators as the "20th hijacker", he was allegedly booked on the flight headed for the White House that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Before he was arrested in Afghanistan they say he met several times with Osama bin Laden and had been trained in al-Qaida camps. Whether all this is true or not is irrelevant. Al-Qaida never signed the Geneva convention; the US did. By violating both the letter and the spirit of international law regarding the treatment of detainees, Rumsfeld effectively turned himself into a war criminal. The fact that terrorists stand outside international norms of combat and democratic oversight is what separates "them" from "us". Erase that distinction and the war on terror morphs into a war of terror.

"The question at this point is not whether Rumsfeld should resign," Joanne Mariner, of Human Rights Watch, told Progressive magazine. "It's whether he should be indicted."

[Briar]

2. It points out many truths

It points out that how something is done is as important as what is done. Bush and Bliar would have us think they believe the opposite: they claim to believe that you can spread democracy and freedom by launching illegal wars, making a mockery of international laws and conventions, abusing human rights, facilitating torture and slaughtering tens of thousands of men women and children.

It points out also that therefore revenge is not the same as justice: see above, and add in show trials of madmen who did not actually commit the crime and any other brutality designed to slake veangeful emotions.

It points out that the real motive behind the pursuit of the brutish Clarke (actually Blair's henchman, drafted in to bully through his authoritarian policies) is nothing more than racism. If our prisons were about rehabilitation and not retribution and punishment (see above) we would not have to fear that former prisoners would commit crime.

Great piece. It does point out the obvious: the trouble is that so many sophists and machiavels have been attacking these crucial principles that they are no longer as obvious as they should be.

[Demeter]

3. Yes Rumsfeld Will Be Tried for War Crimes

I believe; you must believe; we all must believe and insist upon it.

[Jack Rabbit]

4. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Wolfowitz, Feith, Powell . . .

Tenet, Hadley, Perle, Stephen Carbone, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, General Geoffrey Miller, General Ricardo Sanchez, Captain Carolyn Wood . . . .

There's quite a rogues' gallery of war criminals associated with the name Bush or the word neoconservative.

[ShortnFiery]

5. We are so f**ked if we don't get these ghouls out SOON!

Again, we are so f**ked!

There's no way they'll go until 2008, if then?

OMFG what a nightmare we are living today! :scared:

[Demeter]

6. Well, Our Next Window of Opportunity, Short of an Uprising, is November

God help us if we don't flip the whole Congress....