Covering Up for Rumsfeld
Hentoff, Nat
Bill of Rights Watch Nat Hentoff Covering Up for Rumsfeld An angry January 7 editorial in The Washington Post complained: "The record of the past few months suggests that the Administration will...
...In its editorial, The Washington Post said plainly: "Willingly or not, Congressional Republicans are identifying themselves as a party ready to accept systematic violations of human rights...
...By contrast, there has been considerable media coverage of the "Church Report," given to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 10 by Vice Admiral Albert Church III, former Navy inspector general...
...and international treaties that Rumsfeld has violated...
...Church hiccupped a lame qualification: "There was a failure to react to early warning signs of abuse...
...The editorial quoted toady Church: "I don't think you can hold anyone accountable for a situation that maybe if you had done something different, maybe something would have occurred differently...
...Rumsfeld, in the U.S...
...He was a leading perpetrator as counsel to the President...
...As is our hollow President...
...Vice Admiral Church said he didn't interview the Secretary of Defense, who appointed him to lead the investigation, because he didn't find it necessary...
...The lawsuit describes in horrific detail the torture, which occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq, including Abu Ghraib...
...The lawsuit specifies each of the U.S...
...Then hear this from the Church Report: "We found, without exception, that the Department of Defense and senior military commanders responsible for the formulation of interrogation policy evidenced the intent to treat detainees humanely, [and] never accepted that detainee abuse would be permissible...
...This carefully documented seventy-six-page Complaint for Declaratory Relief and Damages charges that the Secretary of Defense "was directly and personally involved in setting interrogation rules, and exercised his power to allow illegal practices- namely the torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S...
...forces have been treated humanely...
...Among the minority of critics of this astoundingly dishonest "investigation" was The Washington Post, which called the report "a blatant example of whitewashing...
...I live in a transparent country where decisions made by government are wide open...
...The Republican-controlled Congress continually resists any independent investigation of this shameful record, as does Attorney General Alberto Gonzales...
...But the "bad apples" in the lower ranks have been punished...
...He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...Accordingly, on March 1, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) filed a landmark lawsuit, Ali et al...
...Arkan Mohammed Ali is one of the eight plaintiffs, all of them finally released without charges after vicious treatment...
...One plaintiff was left hanging upside down, chained, sexually assaulted, and anally probed...
...custody...
...District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Rumsfeld's home state...
...A disgraceful aftermath to the filing of the first detailed, legal demand for accountability at the top of the chain of command-including, by implication, the commander in chief who has countenanced tortures and other abuses-is the failure of most of the media to cover Ali et al...
...He found that "the vast majority of detainees held by the U.S...
...I doubt, therefore, if many Americans are aware of the rampant lawlessness of this Administration in its treatment of prisoners-as spelled out in this lawsuit...
...There have been a few marginal exceptions, and practically none in broadcast or cable television-except to denounce these unpatriotic charges...
...Bill of Rights Watch Nat Hentoff Covering Up for Rumsfeld An angry January 7 editorial in The Washington Post complained: "The record of the past few months suggests that the Administration will neither hold any senior official accountable nor change the policies that have produced this shameful record"-the record of torture and other brutal abuses of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other interrogation centers...
...Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Village Voice, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive...
...In Slovakia, on February 24, George W. Bush declared: "Our country is one that safeguards human rights and human dignity...
Vol. 69 • May 2005 • No. 5
