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Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin - Rumsfeld gone!

« H E Politics :: Commentary :: General :: News :: US :: Akin Akintayo :: email
posted Wednesday, 8 November 2006
Gates open as Rumsfeld steps out

I had probably lost my voice well over a year ago in asking that Donald Rumsfeld either resign or be sacked for his mishandling of Iraq.


In politics, when your boss expresses confidence in you when you are under pressure, it is probably your boss about to pull the carpet from under your feet.


Only two days ago, the President said he would keep Rumsfeld and Cheney till the end of his term, he has kept one part, it is the end of his term with the loss of the sycophantic and toothless Republican dominated Congress to the Democrats.


Bush has reached a Belshazzar moment, even though the handwriting of the polls had been on the wall for quite a while about the change in the power dynamic of Congress, the president refused to read and understand the message, especially on Iraq.


So, Donald Rumsfeld is to be pensioned off; he has resigned with immediate effect, so the unknown unknowns can now read as the inscription of old – Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin – they have all been weighed in balances and found wanting – such is the way of democracy.


Robert Gates might well open the gates to new thinking on the war on terrorism.

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Dear Reader, Whilst welcome to leave comments I might use in other blogs, some rights are reserved. (1)


1. guerrilla radio left...
Wednesday, 15 November 2006 1:50 am :: http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com/

Rumsfeld faces war crimes suit in Germany Civil rights groups have filed a suit with German prosecutors, seeking war crimes charges against outgoing US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the alleged abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.

"I don't expect he'll go to jail. I think he should go to jail," Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) spokesman Peter Weiss said.

"As far as I'm concerned - and my colleagues agree - I would be satisfied if he spent the rest of his life in shame."

Mr Rumsfeld resigned after Democrats had wrested power from the Republicans in last week's US mid-term elections, partly due to dismay over the Iraq war.

The New York-based CCR is one of several groups which had filed the roughly 380-page complaint and application for a criminal investigation to be launched with the Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe.

The prosecutor's officer confirmed receipt of the suit.

A spokesman for the Pentagon says he has not seen the complaint but dismisses it.

"Based on what I know from press accounts, it certainly sounds frivolous to me," spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

He says anyone involved in the mistreatment of detainees has already been punished.

In addition to Mr Rumsfeld, who ran the US Defence Department for nearly six years, the suit names 13 other US officials including Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former CIA director George Tenet and high-ranking military officers.

The groups' lawyers say their case model was former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who had been arrested five times since 1998 due to human rights cases against him.

They filed the suit in Karlsruhe because Germany can prosecute foreign violations of international law under its 2002 universal jurisdiction law.

The complaint is on behalf of 11 Iraqi citizens who were held at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and one Saudi detainee at the US Guantanamo Bay base on Cuba.

The CCR says they were victims of beatings, sleep and food deprivation, hooding and sexual abuse.

In addition to the CCR, the International Federation of Human Rights and others are part of the suit.

-Reuters

vik italian blogger from Milan


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