Germany didn't kill

• Germany seek charges against Rumsfeld for prison abuse sm - LVMT
  • Germany, who killed millions of Jews wants to prosecute Rumsfeld. - Lydia
    • Germany didn't kill - EXMQ MT
      • You must not watch much on the History channel. sm - Brunson

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It may be time for the US to close its military bases in Germany and shift them to Poland and the new East European democracies. They are far better allies and understand the importance of freedom and liberty.

The guy has a great audience and my only fear was he would take on the black agenda when our country if falling apart - There is so much to do. 

Yeah, give the man a stage that at least is proportionate to foreign countries' stage given to an American politician.  Geesh.  

I didn't see crowds gather for anyone else.  When a crowd that size gathers for a person, they can have any darn stage set they want.  As they deserved it. 

Seems that theybarely have a grasp on DC politics, let alone US imperatives abroad and challenges that America faces outside its borders.  They scoff at American traditions such as diplomacy, alliance, common interests and initiatives aimed at real solutions for fascist dictatorships, human rights abuse, global poverty and terrorism.  BTW, though we may have our own garden of home-grown terrorists, most terrorists live abroad.  The ethnocentric jingoism  expressed in the "America, love it of leave it/hate it and leave it" crowd and the imperial aspirations of their party in its attempts to disregard cultural differences, bomb nations into democracy and turn countries of the world into pitstops for the Americans to make on their resource raping rampages is exactly the kind of behavior that empowers terrorist worldviews to attract followers, strengthens their resolve and emboldens them to carry out their terrorist acts of war. 

We actually DO need to take it to Germany and to all UN/NATO countries, turn a new page on our approaches and come up with new solutions, plans well understood by Obama and brilliantly articulated in his plans for diplomacy and policies on the war on terror.  Biden grocs these concepts.  Mccain, same old same old.  Palin doesn't do foreign policy.  The party obvoiusly does not even recognize the need for it.  

Friday, Nov. 10, 2006
Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
A lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo
By ADAM ZAGORIN

Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called 20th hijacker and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a special interrogation plan, personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski — who the lawyers say will be in Germany next week to publicly address her accusations in the case — has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld .

A spokesperson for the Pentagon told TIME there would be no comment since the case has not yet been filed.

Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenet, the other defendants in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Senior military officers named in the filing are General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top Army official in Iraq; Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantanamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski; and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib.

Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides universal jurisdiction allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world. Indeed, a similar, but narrower, legal action was brought in Germany in 2004, which also sought the prosecution of Rumsfeld. The case provoked an angry response from Pentagon, and Rumsfeld himself was reportedly upset. Rumsfeld's spokesman at the time, Lawrence DiRita, called the case a a big, big problem. U.S. officials made clear the case could adversely impact U.S.-Germany relations, and Rumsfeld indicated he would not attend a major security conference in Munich, where he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, unless Germany disposed of the case. The day before the conference, a German prosecutor announced he would not pursue the matter, saying there was no indication that U.S. authorities and courts would not deal with allegations in the complaint.

In bringing the new case, however, the plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the German prosecutor's reasoning for rejecting the previous case — that U.S. authorities were dealing with the issue — has been proven wrong.

The utter and complete failure of U.S. authorities to take any action to investigate high-level involvement in the torture program could not be clearer, says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a U.S.-based non-profit helping to bring the legal action in Germany. He also notes that the Military Commissions Act, a law passed by Congress earlier this year, effectively blocks prosecution in the U.S. of those involved in detention and interrogation abuses of foreigners held abroad in American custody going to back to Sept. 11, 2001. As a result, Ratner contends, the legal arguments underlying the German prosecutor's previous inaction no longer hold up.

Whatever the legal merits of the case, it is the latest example of efforts in Western Europe by critics of U.S. tactics in the war on terror to call those involved to account in court. In Germany, investigations are under way in parliament concerning cooperation between the CIA and German intelligence on rendition — the kidnapping of suspected terrorists and their removal to third countries for interrogation. Other legal inquiries involving rendition are under way in both Italy and Spain.

U.S. officials have long feared that legal proceedings against war criminals could be used to settle political scores. In 1998, for example, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet — whose military coup was supported by the Nixon administration — was arrested in the U.K. and held for 16 months in an extradition battle led by a Spanish magistrate seeking to charge him with war crimes. He was ultimately released and returned to Chile. More recently, a Belgian court tried to bring charges against then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for alleged crimes against Palestinians.

For its part, the Bush Administration has rejected adherence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on grounds that it could be used to unjustly prosecute U.S. officials. The ICC is the first permanent tribunal established to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity.

That makes sense. 

I heard her on Sean Hannity's radio show a few days ago. 

Another real dandy is that Killer the Baby Killer in Kansas.

This so-called pro-choice types are the same ones who tore into Joe Horn for killing an illegal thug who was threatening private property.  Diane Sawyer is only one of these utopian elites.

Funny how the twisted logic of the left works.

I'm serious.  WHO?  I honestly don't know because I don't listen to them, either.  But if they have aired similar threats upon a group of people, then I believe they are equally wrong.

If you are offended by my liberal beliefs being posted on the LIBERAL BOARD, then perhaps you would feel more comfortable on the Conservative Board.  Just a thought.

In the Senate today, 19 Senators voted that it was okay for the Iraqi government to give amnesty to anyone known to have attacked, killed or injured American soldiers, and every single one of them was a Republican.  I guess this is an example of how Republicans *support* the troops.  The only one that truly surprises me is McCain.  He must have lost his mind since he began pandering to those who believe they are Bush's *base.*

Vote Summary:
Question: On the Amendment (Nelson (FL) Amdt. No. 4265 )
Vote Number: 178 Vote Date: June 20, 2006, 03:27 PM
Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Amendment Agreed to
Amendment Number:S.Amdt. 4265 to S. 2766 (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 )
Statement of Purpose: To express the sense of Congress that the Government of Iraq should not grant amnesty to persons known to have attacked, killed, or wounded members of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Vote Counts: YEAs 79
NAYs: 19
Not Voting: 2

Vote Summary By Senator Name By Vote Position By Home State
Grouped By Vote Position

NAYs ---19
Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
DeMint (R-SC)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Hagel (R-NE)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
McCain (R-AZ)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stevens (R-AK)
Thomas (R-WY)
Warner (R-VA)

Not Voting--- 2
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Shelby (R-AL)

YEAs ---79
Akaka (D-HI)
Alexander (R-TN)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Burr (R-NC)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Chafee (R-RI)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
Dayton (D-MN)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Ensign (R-NV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Frist (R-TN)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McConnell (R-KY)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Roberts (R-KS)
Salazar (D-CO)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Wyden (D-OR)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/06/20/19-gop-senators-vote-agai_n_23445.html

Swastika vigilantes kill foreign students to keep their city 'clean' From Jeremy Page in Moscow

THE African students did not even see the man raise the swastika-emblazoned shotgun as they emerged from the Apollo nightclub in St Petersburg. When he opened fire from the shadows behind them, some of the group thought it was a firecracker going off. Then they saw Samba Lampsar Sall, a 28-year-old student from Senegal, lying dead on the pavement with his throat blown apart. Within hours, a sinister message had appeared on the website of a group called the Party of Freedom. “The clean-up of the city continues,” it said. Mr Sall had come to study at St Petersburg’s State Communications University in 2001 in the hope of finding a better life when he went back home. Instead, around dawn yesterday, he became the latest victim of a hate campaign by neo-Nazi extremists on the streets of Russia’s cultural capital. “How can people be so evil?” asked Michael Tanobian, an African student who was with Mr Sall when he was killed. “We come here just to study, for nothing else. We don’t take anything here.” Mr Sall’s brutal murder exposes one of Russia’s most disturbing problems as President Putin prepares to host the G8 summit in St Petersburg in mid-July. For all its grandeur and impressive art collections, Russia’s second city is fast becoming the racist capital of the world. Critics say that the authorities are not doing enough to combat the extremists who routinely attack, and kill, Africans, Asians and immigrants from the Caucasus or Central Asia. Seven people have been killed, and 79 injured, in more than 40 racist attacks this year, according to Sova, a non-governmental organisation that monitors extremism in Russia. Last year, 28 people were killed and 366 injured in racially motivated crimes, it says. The Interior Ministry sent a team of special investigators from Moscow to work on yesterday’s murder. The Foreign Ministry expressed “sincere condolences to the relatives and loved ones of the deceased”. The Prosecutor’s Office said that the case was being treated as a racist killing. But dozens of similar cases have been treated as “hooliganism”, a crime that carries a far lighter sentence. One of the most shocking attacks occurred in 2004, when teenagers stabbed to death a nine-year-old Tajik girl in St Petersburg. Last month, a court convicted them of hooliganism, giving six of them 18-year jail sentences and one of them five years. Desire Defaut, chairman of the local community group African Unity, urged Mr Putin to lead the fight against neo- Nazism. “They must make an announcement at a state level that such a problem exists and state organs must work on it,” he said. “We can’t say they are doing enough if there are two attacks within one week.” Last week, the nine-year-old daughter of a Russian woman and her African husband was wounded in a knife attack in St Petersburg. “What more proof of extremism do they need in St Petersburg?” asked Juldas Okie Etoumbi, chairman of the Association of the African Students of Moscow. But, he added, the problem is not confined to St Petersburg. In the past week, skinheads in Moscow beat up a journalist of Caucasian origin and the culture minister from the Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria. Mr Putin has called racism “an infection” and pledged to stamp it out. But critics say that the Kremlin has tolerated, and even encouraged, ultra-nationalist groups to foster loyalty to the State and make itself look relatively liberal. MURDER CITY Sept 2003 Tajik girl, 5, beaten in St Petersburg Feb 2004 Tajik girl, 9, stabbed Mar 2004 Syrian student pushed in front of train June 2004 Anti-Nazi campaigner shot dead Oct 2004 Vietnamese student stabbed Sept 2005 Congolese student beaten Dec 2005 Cameroonian student stabbed Feb 2006 Malian medical graduate stabbed Apr 2006 Senegalese student shot

his own personal reasons.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php

The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.

Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11—indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.

In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.

Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.

Conversations With Bush The Candidate

Herskowitz—a longtime Houston newspaper columnist—has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers—expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript—pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.

The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior—who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.

I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."

Debating The Timeline For War

But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush—personally—in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"—because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.

The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.

On September 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all…but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…"

I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this."

"I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…" …

"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open.

Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.

Woodward: "President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"

Wallace (voiceover): Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam—and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.

Woodward: "Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the necessary preparations in Kuwait specifically to make war possible."

Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.

Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.

in AR's post that she was against it.  Instead, she acted as if the topic has no place on this board and shouldn't be discussed... like some kind of dirty little secret.

The *attack the messenger* technique has been used constantly in the last 5 years by the current administration (and his followers) when someone gets too close to the truth.  Don't believe me?  Ask Valerie Plame.