Tuesday, December 14, 2004
War Criminal Rumsfeld Builds His Monster
The following is an exchange between Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law and Scott Horton, Committee on International Law, NYNY. Read entire post/exchange HERE
Velvel:
Scott Horton: Chair, Committee on International Law, ABCNY:
"Tell Wind and Fire where to stop, but don't tell me.":
RELATED Via Common Dreams:
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Velvel:
Dear Colleagues:
The attached e-mail, a response to a blog posting called The Neroes Fiddle While the Humvees Burn, is from the Chairman of the International Law Committee of the prestigious Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The e-mail contains information that I think is shocking.
Scott Horton: Chair, Committee on International Law, ABCNY:
Dear Dean Velvel,
Another good column. Of course, as Joe Conason points out in his piece on salon.com posted this morning, this was the second or third time soldiers in the field had put just this question to Rumsfeld--the story goes back at least to a May 13, 2004 townhall meeting in Baghdad. In my view, Rumsfeld's responses show a callous indifference to the plight of soldiers in the field--a shocking attitude to find in a secretary of defense.
Our group at the Bar here have been studying recently disclosed documents from the CIA, DIA and FBI which relate to the abuse of detainees in Guantanamo (and elsewhere). One thing emerging from these documents is that Donald Rumsfeld personally authorized the abuse or torture of detainees, and that the CIA, DIA and FBI all felt the "extreme" measures he authorized were illegal and unethical. Another thing that we see is that the worst abuses are done by some special ops groups which are being directed straight out of the Office of Secretary of Defense, with Undersecretary Steve Cambone and LTG Jerry Boykin clearly exercising operational control over them. We can now link the Cambone-Boykin special ops groups to at least two cases of apparent torture-murder as to which investigations are mysteriously stagnant.
"Tell Wind and Fire where to stop, but don't tell me.":
In March 2002, a presidential commission led by retired Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, the first President Bush's national secuity adviser, recommended that three key Pentagon-financed intelligence agencies- the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency- be placed under the control of the director of the CIA. This was a serious challenge to Rumsfeld's empire. On June 21, 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld responded with what U.S. News & World Report called a "brilliant stealth attack." He quietly inserted in a Senate defense bill the authority to create a new undersecretary of defense for intelligence. "The new undersecretary position is a bureaucratic coup that accomplishes many Pentagon goals in one fell swoop.... [Rumsfeld] is creating another DCI [director of central intelligence] for all practical purposes. The new undersecretary is Rumsfeld's neocon crony Stephen Cambone. He has been given authority over the three nonmilitary intelligence agencies plus the Defense Intelligence Agency. According to Jay Farrar, a former employee in the Defense Department and national Security Council who works with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conservative think tank, "It's one more step in the Defense Department seeking to consolidate major control over the intelligence apparatus of the United States." ~ from "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic", by Chalmers Johnson; page 127
RELATED Via Common Dreams:
Published on Tuesday, December 14, 2004 by Reuters
Rights Group Puts Rumsfeld on Spot Over Afghan Deaths
KABUL - An international rights group said it knows of more prisoners dying in U.S. military custody in Afghanistan and called on Washington to reveal details of the cases.
In an open letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Human Rights Watch revealed two new cases of deaths in custody and demanded an investigation into a third that took place three months ago.
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