Rummy in Big Trouble with Republican Lawmakers! Today's News...

[frank frankly]

June 6, 2004
INVESTIGATIONS
Wide Gaps Seen in U.S. Inquiries on Prison Abuse
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ERIC SCHMITT

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/international/middleeast/06ABUS.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

<snip>

But on Capitol Hill, even some Republicans have begun to question whether the Pentagon's inquiries are too narrowly structured to establish the causes of the abuses, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have pledged to do, and then to determine if anyone in the chain of command was responsible for them.

Some House Republicans, bucking their leaders who have said the focus on Abu Ghraib is distracting from the larger effort in Iraq, have joined Democrats in urging a more aggressive review of the investigations. In the Senate, members of both parties said there remained major aspects that fell outside of the scope of any of the investigations that are now under way — including the role of military lawyers in drafting policy on detainees and the involvement of civilian contractors in their interrogations.

Senator Lindsay O. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he was troubled that the only criminal cases brought so far involved seven low-ranking soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company. He said he believed that there was "command failure at many levels that could be criminally culpable."

Representative Heather Wilson, a New Mexico Republican and former Air Force officer, was unsparing in her assessment of the House's investigative oversight role to date: "We should be doing this directly and bluntly, and in the House we are not. It's been very disappointing to me."

--------------------------

Looks like a good development to me!

:hi:

[ElsewheresDaughter]

1. congress is pissed cuz 2,000 pages of Taguba's report was stripped by WH

the investigative committee is livid because they didn't get these 2,000 pages ......and you can bet rummy is responsible and so is bush for the torture of Iraqi prisoners

[Selwynn]

9. Source please - never heard that the WH stripped them

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

10. Pentagon.

Under political pressure from the WH, I'm sure.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=2000+pages+missing+taguba+report

[Selwynn]

11. That's what I thought - that's different than WH

whether we personally are sure the WH pressured them or not. I like to stick to the facts.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

12. Understood and appreciated.

The obvious tie is Rummy, who spends time at both places, but technically you are correct. It's still an outrage, though.

[Career Prole]

2. There are still a couple of honorable ones left.

I find that encouraging to learn.:)

[spotbird]

3. It took them quite some time to find their conscience.

But who's complaining? Better late than never.

[Career Prole]

6. In all the hubbub they forgot to check

the shelf-life on the Koolaid. :D

[historian]

17. not conscience

just slinking away from the cesspool in time for the elections. Honor and integrity are words which dont belong in washington dc and havent for a long time

[LittleApple81]

4. He wants to prevent them from seeing the Red Cross report too.

see this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1720017

[Disturbed]

7. War Crimes vs Abuse

Members of Congress should be reading this:






What is a war crime?
By Tarik Kafala
BBC News Online


Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: "Willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including... willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ...taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."


This, international lawyers say, is the basic definition of war crimes.

The statutes of The Hague tribunal say the court has the right to try suspects alleged to have violated the laws or customs of war in the former Yugoslavia since 1992. Examples of such violations are given in article 3:

* Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity
* Attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings
* Seizure of, destruction or willful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science
* Plunder of public or private property.

The tribunal defines crime against humanity as crimes committed in armed conflict but directed against a civilian population. Again a list of examples is given in article 5:

* Murder
* Extermination
* Enslavement
* Deportation
* Imprisonment
* Torture
* Rape
* Persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1420133.stm

[Straight Shooter]

5. "criminally culpable" replaces "compassionate conservatism"

About time to tell it like it is.

[frank frankly]

8. kick

:kick:

[frank frankly]

13. kick

:kick:

[frank frankly]

14. kick

:kick:

[KoKo]

15. I think some of us are worried that this, too, won't go anywhere. Much

"sound and fury" and in the end it will still be just a "few bad apples."

We've seen so much of this before. Why get all worked up thinking it will go anywhere? I'm hopeful one or two Repug Senators or House Members have a conscience. But, not optimistic. Conscience is a dead word..belongs to the "old world" way of doing things. We are forging a "brave new world" of deceit, depravity and control of the many by the few. :-(

[yardwork]

16. I don't think it will go away forever.

More photos and videos are out there in digital form. Congress has seen them. The WH and Pentagon are doing all they can to sweep this under a rug and make it disappear, but sooner or later the really horrific pictures will surface, causing another uproar. The closer it is to the election when that happens, the worse it is for BushCo.

They've stupidly postponed problems before only to have them jump up and bite them later.