Others, like Kissinger and Perry, land in a university post. Rumsfeld? We’re still stuck with him, and for who knows how long. He’s traded Pentagon limelight for Defense Department shadows. As a non-paid consultant (a status needed to continue his security clearance, or so the Pentagon says) he works from an office provided by our government, with seven Pentagon-paid staff. The excuse is paper-sifting.
The transition office has raised some eyebrows inside the Pentagon. Some question the size of the staff, which includes two military officers and two enlisted men. They also ask why the sorting could not have been done from the time Mr. Rumsfeld resigned Nov. 8 to when he left the building Dec. 18.
Big deal, huh?
I suspect he’s doing more than assigning documents to some library. For openers, he brought with him his close advisor, Dr. Stephen A. Cambone, his Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (that “Dr.” is for a Ph.D. in Political Science). Guys like Cambone, who held the top spy job in the country, don’t fade away as a step’n’fetchit for someone’s book project.
Cambone was next to — maybe in front of — Rumsfeld and his decisions to expand brutal intelligence-gathering techniques into Abu Ghraib. Seymour Hersh wrote at length:
Cambone was a strong advocate for war against Iraq. He shared Rumsfeld’s disdain for the analysis and assessments proffered by the C.I.A., viewing them as too cautious, and chafed, as did Rumsfeld, at the C.I.A.’s inability, before the Iraq war, to state conclusively that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction.
Cambone grabbed control of the Pentagon’s “special-access program” (sap) and its very troubling interrogation procedures.
Cambone then made another crucial decision…: not only would he bring the sap’s rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap’s auspices.
Told that no rules apply, that the interrogations were part of a covert operation kept within the Defense Department, seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company ultimately faced charges for their role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Abu Ghraib, of course, is the reason Rumsfeld and Cambone bear the stigma of war criminal, even though they have yet to be prosecuted, much less convicted. An earlier complaint lodged in Germany had been dismissed on the eve of Rumsfeld’s trip to Munich. By November 2006, though, the case was even stronger: new evidence (including Brig. Gen. Karpinski’s testimony), new plaintiffs, and a new German Federal Prosecutor.
So, a new criminal complaint of war crimes was filed on behalf of 12 Iraqi citizens held at Abu Ghraib and one Guantanamo detainee. Co-plaintiffs requesting an investigation include notable individuals, anti-torture leaders, and an impressive list of forty organizations from around the world. A lot of people aren’t satisfied that the torture in Abu Ghraib was simply hicks run amok. Who brought the dog leashes to Iraq?
Some other defendants: George Tenet, Alberto Gonzales (as former chief White House counsel), John Yoo (as former Deputy assistant attorney general), William Haynes (DoD general counsel), Jay Bybee (former assistant attorney general) and the Vice President’s chief counsel, another lawyer with a unique perspective on the Constitution, David Addington. The new complaint charges government lawyers with being the legal architects of the Bush Administration’s practice of torture.
Why Germany? Jurisdiction. German law authorizes the investigation and prosecution of war crimes from anywhere. The United States has refused to join the International Criminal Court, so it can’t be prosecuted there.
Quiz time. You’re Rumsfeld. You could write a boring volume after sifting through the blizzard of memoranda you showered on all and sundry. Or you could prepare your defense to an investigation and prosecution for war crimes. Maybe, too, you could do something that required the employment of two officers, two enlisted men, and Dr. Stephen Cambone.
Door Number One?…
