[act-ma] Call Mass. D.A.s Today: Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under Arrest
ralph lopez
ralphlopez2008 at gmail.com
Tue Sep 20 07:42:24 PDT 2011
Rumsfeld visit is tomorrow. Mass. District Attorney phone numbers at end of
article, please call them today and email them this post. ARREST RUMSFELD!
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/20/1018370/-Welcome-to-Boston,-Mr-Rumsfeld-You-Are-Under-Arrest
Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under
Arrest.<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/20/1018370/-Welcome-to-Boston,-Mr-Rumsfeld-You-Are-Under-Arrest>
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal
immunity<http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/8515-court-advances-us-torture-victims-case-against-donald-rumsfeld>for
acts of torture against US citizens authorized while he was in office.
The 7th Circuit made the ruling in the case of two American contractors who
were tortured by the US military in Iraq after uncovering a smuggling ring
within an Iraqi security company. The company was under contract to the
Department of Defense. The company was assisting Iraqi insurgent groups in
the "mass acquisition" of American weapons. The ruling comes as Rumsfeld
begins his book tour with a visit to Boston on Wednesday, September 21, and
as new, uncensored photos of Abu Ghraib spark fresh outrage across Internet.
Awareness is growing that Bush-era crimes went far beyond mere
waterboarding.
*
Torture Room, Abu Ghraib*
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters in
2004<http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2005/07/25/abughraib>of
photos withheld by the Defense Department from Abu Ghraib, “The
American
public needs to understand, we’re talking about rape and murder here...We’re
not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We’re talking
about rape and murder and some very serious charges.” And journalist Seymour
Hersh says <http://boingboing.net/2004/07/15/hersh-children-raped.html>:
"boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of
that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has."
Rumsfeld resigned days before a criminal complaint was filed in Germany in
which the American general who commanded the military police battalion at
Abu Ghraib had promised to testify. General Janis Karpinski in an interview
with Salon.com <http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/11/10/019/41657> was
asked: "Do you feel like Rumsfeld is at the heart of all of this and should
be held completely accountable for what happened [at Abu Ghraib]?"
Karpinski answered: "Yes, absolutely." In the criminal complaint filed in
Germany against Rumsfeld, Karpinski submitted 17 pages of
testimony<http://jicj.oxfordjournals.org/content/7/5/1087.full>and
offered to appear before the German prosecutor as a witness.
Congressman Kendrick Meek of Florida, who participated in the hearings on
Abu Ghraib, said of Rumsfeld: "There was no way Rumsfeld didn’t know what
was going on. He’s a guy who wants to know everything."
And Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the official Army investigation
into Abu Ghraib, said in his
report<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/06/18/41514/general-who-probed-abu-ghraib.html>
:
"there is no longer any doubt as to whether the [Bush] administration has
committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use
of torture will be held to account."
*Abu Ghraib Prisoner Smeared with Feces*
Amazingly, the two American contractors in the 7th Circuit decision were
known by the military to be working undercover for the FBI, to whom they had
reported witnessing the sale of U.S government munitions to Iraqi rebel
groups. The FBI in Iraq had vouched for Vance and Ertel numerous times
before they nevertheless disappeared into military custody. They were held
at Camp Cropper in Iraq where the two were tortured, one for 97 days, and
the other for six weeks.
In a puzzling and incriminating move, Camp Cropper base commander General
John Gardner ordered Nathan Ertel released on May 17, 2006, while keeping
Donald Vance in detention for another two months of torture. By ordering
the release of one man but not the other, Gardner revealed awareness of the
situation but prolonged it at the same time.
It is unlikely that Gardner could act alone in a situation as sensitive as
the illegal detention and torture of two Americans confirmed by the FBI to
be working undercover in the national interest, to prevent American weapons
and munitions from reaching the hands of insurgents, for the sole purpose of
using them to kill American troops. Vance and Ertel suggest he was acting
on orders from the highest political level.
The forms of torture employed against the Americans included "techniques"
which crop up frequently in descriptions of Iraqi and Afghan prisoner abuse
at Bagram, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib. They included "walling," where the
head is slammed repeatedly into a concrete wall, sleep deprivation to the
point of psychosis by use of round-the-clock bright lights and harsh music
at ear-splitting volume, in total isolation, for days, weeks or months at a
time, and intolerable cold.
The 7th Circuit ruling is the latest in a growing number of legal actions
involving hundreds of former prisoners and torture victims filed in courts
around the world. Criminal complaints have been filed against Rumsfeld and
other Bush administration officials in Germany, France, and
Spain<http://jicj.oxfordjournals.org/content/7/5/1087.full>.
Former President Bush recently curbed travel to
Switzerland<http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/05/us-bush-torture-idUSTRE7141CU20110205>due
to fear of arrest following criminal complaints lodged in Geneva.
"He's
avoiding the handcuffs," Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, told
Reuters.
And the Mayor of London threatened Bush with arrest for war crimes earlier
this year should he ever set foot in his city, saying that were
he<http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2010/11/24/pacifica-radio-mayor-london-suggests-bush-could-be-arrested-torture-if-h>to
land in London to "flog his memoirs," that "the real trouble — from
the
Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again."
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief-of-Staff Col. Lawrence
Wilkerson surmised on
MSNBC<http://ed.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/04/6587693-col-wilkerson-rumsfeld-is-delusional>earlier
this year that soon, Saudi Arabia and Israel will be "the only two
countries Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest will travel too."
*Abu Ghraib: Dog Bites*
What would seem to make Rumsfeld's situation more precarious is the number
of credible former officials and military officers who seem to be eager to
testify against him, such as Col. Wilkerson and General Janis Karpinsky.
In a signed declaration in support of torture plaintiffs in a civil suit
naming Rumsfeld in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Col.
Wilkerson, one of Rumsfeld's most vociferous critics,
stated:<http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/testimonies-of-foreign-affairs-officials/declaration-by-lawrence-b-wilkerson-in-the-case-of-adel-hamad>"I
am willing to testify in person regarding the content of this
declaration, should that be necessary." That declaration, among other
things, affirmed that a documentary on the chilling
murder<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042601569.html>of
a 22-year-old Afghan farmer and taxi driver in Afghanistan was
"accurate." Wilkerson said earlier this
year<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/sixm-m07.shtml>that in
that case, and in the case of another murder at Bagram at about the
same time, "authorization for the abuse went to the very top of the United
States government.”
*Dilawar*
The young farmer's name was Dilawar. The New York Times reported on May 20,
2005:<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?pagewanted=all>
"Four days before [his death,] on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Id
al-Fitr, Mr. Dilawar set out from his tiny village of Yakubi in a prized new
possession, a used Toyota sedan that his family bought for him a few weeks
earlier to drive as a taxi.
On the day that he disappeared, Mr. Dilawar's mother had asked him to gather
his three sisters from their nearby villages and bring them home for the
holiday. However, he needed gas money and decided instead to drive to the
provincial capital, Khost, about 45 minutes away, to look for fares."
Dilawar's misfortune was to drive past the gate of an American base which
had been hit by a rocket attack that morning. Dilawar and his fares were
arrested at a checkpoint by a warlord, who was later suspected of mounting
the rocket attack himself, and then turning over randam captures like
Dilawar in order to win trust.
The UK Guardian
reports:<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/21/afghanistan.afghanistantimeline>
"Guards at Bagram routinely kneed prisoners in their thighs -- a blow called
a "peroneal strike"...Whenever a guard did this to Dilawar, he would cry
out, "Allah! Allah!" Some guards apparently found this amusing, and would
strike him repeatedly to show off the behavior to buddies.
One military policeman told investigators, "Everybody heard him cry out and
thought it was funny. ... It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would
think that it was over 100 strikes.""
Dilawar was shackled from the ceiling much of the time, with his feet barely
able to touch the ground. On the last day of his life, after 4 days at
Bagram, an interpreter who was present said his legs were bouncing
uncontrollably as he sat in a plastic chair. He had been chained by the
wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
The New York Times reported that on the last day of his life, four days
after he was arrested:
"Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators,
Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first
he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner
fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison
scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the
water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.
"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the
prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his
knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days,
could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a
doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his
cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to
the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying."
The next time the prison medic saw Dilawar a few hours later, he was dead,
his head lolled to one side and his body beginning to stiffen. A coroner
would testify that his legs "had basically been
pulpified."<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html>The
Army coroner, Maj. Elizabeth Rouse, said: "I've seen similar injuries
in
an individual run over by a bus." She testified that had he lived, Dilawar's
legs would have had to be amputated.
Despite the military's false statement that Dilawar's death was the result
of "natural causes," Maj. Rouse marked the death certificate as a "homicide"
and arranged for the certificate to be delivered to the family. The
military was forced to retract the statement when a reporter for the New
York Times, Carlotta Gall, tracked down Dilawar's family in Afghanistan and
was given a folded piece of paper by Dilawar's brother. It was the death
certificate, which he couldn't read, because it was in English.
The practice of forcing prisoners to stand for long periods of time, links
Dilawar's treatment to a memo which bears Rumsfeld's own handwriting on that
particular subject. Obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request,
the memo may show how fairly benign-sounding authorizations for clear
circumventions of the Geneva Conventions may have translated into gruesome
practice on the battlefield.
The memo, which addresses keeping prisoners "standing" for up to four hours,
is annotated with a note initialed by Rumfeld reading: ""I stand for 8–10
hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" Not mentioned in writing
anywhere is anything about accomplishing this by chaining prisoners to the
ceiling. There is evidence that, unable to support his weight on tiptoe for
the days on end he was chained to the ceiling, Dilawars arms dislocated, and
they flapped around uselessly when he was taken down for interrogation. The
National Catholic Reporter
writes<http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005c/081205/081205z.htm>"They
flapped like a bird’s broken wings"
Contradicting, on the record, a February 2003 statement by Rumfeld's top
commander in Afghnanistan at the time, General Daniel McNeill, that “we are
not chaining people to the ceilings," is Spc. Willie Brand, the only soldier
disciplined in the death of Dilawar, with a reduction in rank. Told of
McNeill's statement, Brand told Scott Pelley on 60
Minutes<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/02/60minutes/main1364163.shtml>:
"Well, he's lying." Brand said of his punishment: "I didn't understand how
they could do this after they had trained you to do this stuff and they turn
around and say you've been bad"
*Exhibit: A sketch by Sgt. Thomas V. Curtis, a former Reserve M.P. sergeant,
showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell*
*Exhibit: Dilawar Death Certificate marked
"homicide"*<http://www.charlydmiller.com/LIB06/2005JulyMedscapePOWRA.html>
*Exhibit: Rumsfeld Memo: "I stand 8-10 hours a day. Why only 4 hours?"*
<http://www.slate.com/features/whatistorture/pdfs/020927.pdf>
*Dilawar's daughter and her grandfather*
*Binyam, Genital-Slicing*
Binyam Mohamed was seized by the Pakistani Forces in April 2002 and turned
over to the Americans for a $5,000 bounty. He was held for more than five
years without charge or trial in Bagram Air Force Base, Guantánamo Bay, and
third country "black" sites.
In his diary he describes being flown by a US government plane to a prison
in Morocco. He writes:
"They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel. I was naked. I
tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe
they'd electrocute me. Maybe castrate me...
One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it
once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was
in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There
was blood all over. "I told you I was going to teach you who's the man,"
[one] eventually said.
They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just
to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor."
I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me
about once a month. One time I asked a guard: "What's the point of this?
I've got nothing I can say to them. I've told them everything I possibly
could."
"As far as I know, it's just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you'll
have these scars and you'll never forget. So you'll always fear doing
anything but what the US wants."
Later, when a US airplane picked me up the following January, a female MP
took pictures. She was one of the few Americans who ever showed me any
sympathy. When she saw the injuries I had she gasped. They treated me and
took more photos when I was in Kabul. Someone told me this was "to show
Washington it's healing".
*The obvious question for any prosecutor in Binyam's case is: Who does
"Washington" refer to? Rumfeld? Cheney? Is it not in the national
interest to uncover these most depraved of sadists at the highest
level?* US Judge Gladys Kessler, in her findings on Binyam made in
relation to a
Guantanamo prisoner's petition, found Binyam exceedingly credible. She
wrote: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/04/guantanamo-torture>
"His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was
summarily transported from one foreign prison to another. Captors held him
in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to
piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a
pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and
others in plots to imperil Americans. The government does not dispute this
evidence."
*Obama: Torturers' Last Defense*
The prospect of Rumsfeld in a courtroom cannot possibly be relished by the
Obama administration, which has now cast itself as the last and staunchest
defender of the embattled former officials, including John Yoo, Alberto
Gonzalez, Judge Jay Bybee, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and others. The
administration employed an unprecedented twisting of
arms<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/04/guantanamo-torture>in
order to keep evidence in a lawsuit which Binyam had filed in the UK
suppressed, threatening an end of cooperation between the British MI5 and
the CIA. This even though the British judges whose hand was forced puzzled
that the evidence "contained "no disclosure of sensitive intelligence
matters." The judges suggested another reason for the secrecy requested by
the Obama administration, that it might be "politically embarrassing."
The Obama Justice Department's active involvement in seeking the dismissal
of the cases is by choice, as the statutory obligation of the US Attorney
General to defend cases against public officials ends the day they leave
office. Indeed, the real significance of recent court decisions, the one by
the 7th Circuit and yet another against Rumsfeld in a DC federal
court<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/donald-rumsfeld-torture-lawsuit_n_917966.html>,
may be the clarification the common misconception that high officials are
forever immune for crimes committed while in office, in the name of the
state. The misconception persists despite just a moment of thought telling
one that if this were true, Hermann Goering, Augusto Pinochet, and Charles
Taylor would never have been arrested, for they were all in office at the
time they ordered atrocities, and they all invoked national security.
Judge Kessler's findings point to yet another even more alarming aspect of
the Bush-era crimes for which Rumsfeld is now being pursued for his part.
And that is the emerging evidence that the tortures perpetrated were not
designed to protect national security at all, but to obtain false
confessions in order to score propaganda points for the War on terror.
Andy Worthington writes <http://www.alternet.org/rights/103289/> that:
"As it happens, one of the confessions that was tortured out of Binyam is so
ludicrous that it was soon dropped...The US authorities insisted that
Padilla and Binyam had dinner with various high-up members of al-Qaeda the
night before Padilla was to fly off to America. According to their theory
the dinner party had to have been on the evening of 3 April in Karachi ...
Binyam was meant to have dined with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah,
Sheikh al-Libi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Jose Padilla." What made the scenario
"absurd," as [Binyam's lawyer] pointed out, was that "two of the
conspirators were already in U.S. custody at the time -- Abu Zubaydah was
seized six days before, on 28 March 2002, and al-Libi had been held since
November 2001.""
The charges against Binyam were dropped, after the prosecutor, Lieutenant
Colonel Darrel Vandeveld,
resigned.<http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812?currentPage=4>He
told the BBC later that he had concerns at the repeated suppression of
evidence that could prove prisoners’ innocence.
The litany of tortures alleged against Rumsfeld in the military prisons he
ran could go on for some time. The new photographic images from Abu Ghraib
make it hard to conceive of how the methods of torture and dehumanization
could have possibly served a national purpose.
The approved use of attack dogs, sexual humiliation, forced masturbation,
and treatments which plumb the depths of human depravity are either
documented in Rumsfeld's own
memos<http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2005/05/taxonomy_of_tor.html>,
or credibly reported on.
The UK Guardian writes: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/may/08/iraq.iraq>
"The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an
invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and
degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated
among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing,
according to British military sources.
The techniques devised in the system, called R2I - resistance to
interrogation - match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the
Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.
One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq,
said: "It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq
that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what
they were doing.""
*Torture Now Aimed at Americans, Programs Designed to Obtain False
Confessions, Not Intelligence*
The worst of the worst is that Rumsfeld's logic strikes directly at the
foundations of our democracy and the legitimacy of the War on Terror. The
torture methods studied and adopted by the Bush administration were not new,
but adopted from the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program
(SERE) which is taught to elite military units. The program was developed
during the Cold War, in response to North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet Bloc
torture methods. But the aim of those methods was never to obtain
intelligence, but to elicit false confessions. The Bush administration
asked the military to "reverse
engineer"<http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1201seretorture#a1201seretorture>the
methods, i.e. figure out how to break down resistance to false
confessions.
In the 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee
report<http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081212_report_rumsfeld_responsible_for_detainee_abuse/>which
indicted high-level Bush administration officials, including Rumsfeld,
as bearing major responsibility for the torture at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo,
and Bagram, the Committee said:
"SERE instructors explained "Biderman's Principles" – which were based on
coercive methods used by the Chinese Communist dictatorship to elicit false
confessions from U.S. POWs during the Korean War – and left with GTMO
personnel a chart of those coercive techniques."
The Biderman Principles were based on the work of Air Force Psychiatrist
Albert Biderman, who wrote the landmark "Communist Attempts to Elecit False
Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War," on which SERE resistance was
based. Biderman wrote<http://www.american-buddha.com/torture.bidermanmemo.htm>
:
"The experiences of American Air Force prisoners of war in Korea who were
pressured for false confessions, enabled us to compile an outline of methods
of eliciting compliance, not much different, it turned out, from those
reported by persons held by Communists of other nations. I have prepared a
chart showing a condensed version of this outline."
The chart is a how-to for communist torturers interested only in false
confessions for propaganda purposes, not intelligence. It was the manual
for, in Biderman's words, "brainwashing." In the reference for Principle
Number 7, "Degradation," the chart explains:
"Makes Costs of Resistance Appear More Damaging to Self-Esteem than
Capitulation; Reduces Prisoner to "Animal Level...Personal Hygiene
Prevented; Filthy, Infested Surroundings; Demeaning Punishments; Insults and
Taunts; Denial of Privacy"
Appallingly, this could explain that even photos such as those of
feces-smeared prisoners at Abu Ghraib might not, as we would hope, be only
the individual work of particularly demented guards, but part of systematic
degradation authorized at the highest levels.
*Exhibit: Abu Ghraib, Female POW*
This could go far toward explaining why the Bush administration seemed so
tone-deaf to intelligence
professionals<http://www.opednews.com/articles/Top-Interrogation-Experts-by-George-Washington-090423-933.html>,
including legendary CIA Director William Colby, who essentially told them
they were doing it all wrong. A startling level of consensus existed within
the intelligence community that the way to produce good intelligence was to
gain the trust of prisoners and to prove everything they had been told by
their recruiters, about the cruelty and degeneracy of America, to be wrong.
But why would the administration care about what worked to produce
intelligence, if the goal was never intelligence in the first place? What
the Ponzi scheme of either innocent men or low-level operatives
incriminating each other DID accomplish, was produce a framework of rapid
successes and trophies in the new War on Terror.
*And now, American contractors Vance and Ertel show, unless there are
prosecutions, the law has effectively changed and they can do it to
Americans.* Jane Mayer in the New Yorker describes a new regime for
prisoners which has become coldly methodical, quoting a report issued by the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, titled “Secret Detentions
and Illegal Transfers of Detainees.” In the report on the CIA paramilitary
Special Activities Division detainees were “taken to their cells by strong
people who wore black outfits, masks that covered their whole faces, and
dark visors over their eyes.”
Mayer writes<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1YQpfptPh>that
a former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeout”
of prisoners as:
"a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was
hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal
suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret
location."
A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity
searches and the frequent use of suppositories, likened the treatment to
“sodomy.” He said, “It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any
dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability."
Of course we have seen these images before, in the trial balloon treatment
of Jose Padilla, the first American citizen arrested and declared "enemy
combatant" in the first undeclared war without end. The designation placed
Padilla outside of his Bill of Rights as an American citizen even though he
was arrested on American soil. Padilla was kept in isolation and tortured
for nearly 4 years before being released to a civilian trial, at which point
according to his lawyer he was useless in his own defense, and exhibited
fear and mistrust of everyone, complete docility, and a range of nervous
facial tics <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/us/04detain.html>.
*Jose Padilla in Military Custody*
He was convicted by a Miami jury and sentenced to 17 more years. As of this
writing, and meriting it's own outrage, on Sept. 19, an appeals court threw
out Padilla's sentence as "too
lenient"<http://www.globalwinnipeg.com/world/us+court+says+17-year+prison+sentence+for+terror+plotter+jose+padilla+is+too+short/6442484691>and
has sent it back for review.
Rumsfeld's avuncular "golly-gee, gee-whiz" performances in public are
legendary. Randall M. Schmidt, the Air Force Lieutenant General appointed
by the Army to investigate abuses at Guantanamo, and who recommended holding
Rumsfeld protege and close associate General Geoffrey Miller "accountable"
as the commander of Guantanamo, watched Rumfeld's performance before a House
Committee with some interest. “He was going, ‘My
God!<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh?printable=true#ixzz1YRBn1bZQ>Did
I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy’s head and telling
him all his buddies knew he was a homosexual?’ ”
But General Taguba said of Rumsfeld: “Rummy did what we called ‘case law’
policy —- verbal and not in writing. What he’s really saying is that if this
decision comes back to haunt me I’ll deny it.”
Taguba went on<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh?printable=true#ixzz1YR8TixVE>:
“Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no
way he’s suffering from C.R.S.—Can’t Remember Shit."
Miller was the general deployed by Rumfeld to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib in 2003
after Rumfeld had determined they were being too "soft" on prisoners. He
said famously in one memo "you have to treat them like dogs." General
Karpinski questioned the fall of Charles Graner and Lyndie England as the
main focus of low-level "bad apple" abuse in the Abu Ghraib investigations.
"Did Lyndie England deploy with a dog leash?" she asks.
*Exhibit: Dog deployed at Abu Ghraib, mentally-ill prisoner*
*Abu Ghraib prisoner in "restraint" chair, screaming "Allah!!"*
Rumfeld's worry now is the doctrine of Universal
Jurisdiction<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction>,
as well as ordinary common law. The veil of immunity stripped in civil
cases would seem to free the hand of any prosecutor who determines there is
sufficient evidence that a crime has been committed based on available
evidence. A grand jury's bar for opening a prosecution is minimal. It has
been said "a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich." Rumsfeld, and the
evidence against him, would certainly seem to pass this test.
The name Dilawar translates to English roughly as "Braveheart." Let us pray
he had one to endure the manner of his death. But the more spiritual may
believe that somehow it had a purpose, to shock the world and begin the
toppling of unimaginable evil among us. Dilawar represented the poorest of
the poor and most powerless, wanting only to pick up his three sisters, as
his mother had told him to, for the holiday. The question now is whether
Americans will finally draw a line, as the case against Rumsfeld falls into
place and becomes legally bulletproof. Andy Worthington noted that the case
for prosecutors became rock solid when Susan Crawford, senior Pentagon
official overseeing the Military Commissions at Guantánamo — told Bob
Woodward<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/01/20/bush-era-ends-with-guantanamo-trial-chiefs-torture-confession>that
the Bush administration had "met the legal definition of torture.”
As Rumfeld continues his book tour and people like Dilawar are remembered,
it is not beyond the pale that an ambitious prosecutor, whether local,
state, or federal, might sense the advantage. It is perhaps unlikely, but
not inconceivable, that upon landing at Logan International Airport on Wed.,
Sept. 21st, or similarly anywhere he travels thereafter, Rumsfeld could be
greeted with the words such as: *"Welcome to Boston, Mr. Secretary. You are
under arrest."*
Massachusetts District Attorneys Who Can Indict Rumsfeld, Please Email them
this post and call them.
SAMPLE INDICTMENT TEXT, BASED ON GERMAN CRIMINAL
COMPLAINT<http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/Docs/NLP/Germany/Rumsfeld_CriminalIndictment_29-11-2004.pdf>
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley:
email: ago at state.ma.us
One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108 -1518
Phone: (617) 727-2200
County
Name
Address
Berkshire County: District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter
Elected November 2006
OFFICE ADDRESS: P.O. Box 973
888 Purchase Street
New Bedford, MA 02741
PHONE: (508) 997-0711
FAX: (508) 997-0396
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.bristolda.com
Berkshire Acushnet, Attleborough, Berkley, Dartmouth, Dighton, Easton,
Fairhaven, Fall River, Freetown, Mansfield, New Bedford, North Attleborough,
Norton, Raynham, Rehoboth, Seekonk, Somerset, Swansea, Taunton, Westport
Bristol County District Attorney David F. Capeless
Appointed March 2004
Elected November 2004
OFFICE ADDRESS: 7 North Street
P.O. Box 1969
Pittsfield, MA 01202-1969
PHONE: (413) 443-5951
FAX: (413) 499-6349
Internet Address:
http://www.mass.gov/...<http://www.mass.gov/berkshireda>
Bristol Adams, Alford, Becket, Cheshire, Clarksburg, Dalton, Egremont,
Florida, Great Barrington, Hancock, Hinsdale, Lanesborough, Lee, Lenox,
Monterey, Mount Washington, New Ashford, New Marlborough, North Adams, Otis,
Peru, Pittsfield, Richmond, Sandisfield, Savoy, Sheffield, Stockbridge,
Tyringham, Washington, West Stockbridge, Williamstown, Windsor
Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS: P.O.Box 455
3231 Main Street
Barnstable, MA 02630
PHONE: (508) 362-8113
FAX: (508) 362-8221
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.mass.gov/...<http://www.mass.gov/da/cape>
Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head), Barnstable, Bourne, Brewster, Chatham,
Chilmark, Dennis, Eastham, Edgartown, Falmouth, Gosnold, Harwich, Mashpee,
Nantucket, Oak Bluffs, Orleans, Provincetown, Sandwich, Tisbury, Truro,
Wellfleet, West Tisbury, Yarmouth
Essex County: District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS: Ten Federal Street
Salem, MA 01970
PHONE: (978) 745-6610
FAX: (978) 741-4971
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.mass.gov/...<http://www.mass.gov/da/essex>
Amesbury, Andover, Beverly, Boxford, Danvers, Essex, Georgetown,
Gloucester, Groveland, Hamilton, Haverhill, Ipswich, Lawrence, Lynn,
Lynnfield, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Marblehead, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleton,
Nahant, Newbury, Newburyport, North Andover, Peabody, Rockport, Rowley,
Salem, Salisbury, Saugus, Swampscott, Topsfield, Wenham, West Newbury
Hampden District Attorney Mark Mastroianni
Elected 2010
OFFICE ADDRESS: Hall of Justice
50 State Street
Springfield, MA 01103
PHONE: (413) 747-1000
FAX: (413) 781-4745
Agawam, Blandford, Brimfield, Chester, Chicopee, East Longmeadow,
Granville, Hampden, Holland, Holyoke, Longmeadow, Ludlow, Monson,
Montgomery, Palmer, Russell, Southwick, Springfield, Tolland, Wales, West
Springfield, Westfield, Wilbraham
Middlesex County: District Attorney Gerard T. Leone, Jr.
Elected November 2006
OFFICE ADDRESS: 15 Commonwealth Avenue
Woburn, MA 01801
PHONE: (781) 897-8300
FAX: ((781) 897-8301
INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.middlesexda.com
Middlesex Acton, Arlington, Ashby, Ashland, Ayer, Bedford, Belmont,
Billerica, Boxborough, Burlington, Cambridge, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Concord,
Dracut, Dunstable, Everett, Framingham, Groton, Holliston, Hopkinton,
Hudson, Lexington, Lincoln, Littleton, Lowell, Malden, Marlborough, Maynard,
Medford, Melrose, Natick, Newton, North Reading, Pepperell, Reading,
Sherborn, Shirley, Somerville, Stoneham, Stow, Sudbury, Tewksbury, Townsend,
Tyngsborough, Wakefield, Waltham, Watertown, Wayland, Westford, Weston,
Wilmington, Winchester, Woburn
Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey
Elected 2010
OFFICE ADDRESS: 45 Shawmut Ave.
Canton, MA 02021
PHONE: (781) 830-4800
FAX: (781) 830-4801
INTERNET ADDRESS:
http://www.mass.gov/...<http://www.mass.gov/da/norfolk/>
Avon, Braintree, Brookline, Canton, Cohasset, Dedham, Dover, Foxborough,
Franklin, Holbrook, Medfield, Medway, Millis, Milton, Needham, Norfolk,
Norwood, Plainville, Quincy, Randolph, Sharon, Stoughton, Walpole,
Wellesley, Westwood, Weymouth, Wrentham
Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan
Elected 2010
HAMPSHIRE OFFICE ADDRESS: One Gleason Plaza
Northampton, MA 01060
PHONE: (413) 586-9225
FAX: (413) 584-3635
FRANKLIN OFFICE ADDRESS: 13 Conway Street
Greenfield, MA 01301
PHONE: (413) 774-3186
FAX: (413) 773-3278
WEBSITE:
Northwestern http://www.mass.gov/...<http://www.mass.gov/da/northwestern>
Amherst, Ashfield, Athol, Belchertown, Bernardston, Buckland,
Charlemont, Chesterfield, Colrain, Conway, Cummington, Deerfield,
Easthampton, Erving, Gill, Goshen, Granby, Greenfield, Hadley, Hatfield,
Hawley, Heath, Huntington, Leverett, Leyden, Middlefield, Monroe, Montague,
New Salem, Northampton, Northfield, Orange, Pelham, Plainfield, Rowe,
Shelburne, Shutesbury, South Hadley, Southampton, Sunderland, Ware, Warwick,
Wendell, Westhampton, Whately, Williamsburg, Worthington
Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz
Appointed November 2001
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS: 32 Belmont Street
Brockton, MA 02303
PHONE: (508) 584-8120
FAX: (508) 586-3578
INTERNET ADDRESS:
http://www.mass.gov/...<http://www.mass.gov/da/plymouth/>
Plymouth Abington, Bridgewater, Brockton, Carver, Duxbury, East
Bridgewater, Halifax, Hanover, Hanson, Hingham, Hull, Kingston, Lakeville,
Marion, Marshfield, Mattapoisett, Middleborough, Norwell, Pembroke,
Plymouth, Plympton, Rochester, Rockland, Scituate, Wareham, West
Bridgewater, Whitman
Suffolk County: District Attorney Daniel F. Conley
Appointed January 2002
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS: One Bulfinch Place
Boston, MA 02114
PHONE: (617) 619-4000
FAX: (617) 619-4009
INTERNET ADDRESS:
http://www.mass.gov/...<http://www.mass.gov/da/suffolk/>
Boston, Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop
Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early, Jr.
Worcester Elected November 2006
Worcester OFFICE ADDRESS: Courthouse - Room 220
Worcester 2 Main Street
Worcester Worcester, MA 01608
Worcester PHONE: (508) 755-8601
Worcester FAX: (508) 831-9899
Worcester INTERNET ADDRESS: http://www.worcesterda.com
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