[Vision2020] Fire Rumsfeld

[Tom Hansen]

>From www.moveon.org

It's time for President Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld from his post as
America's Secretary of Defense.  The signs are now everywhere.

As Thomas Friedman put it, in a column titled "Restoring Our Honor":

  "This administration needs to undertake a total overhaul of its Iraq
  policy; otherwise, it is courting a total disaster for us all.  That
  overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary of
  Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- today, not tomorrow or next month, today." [1]

Please call President Bush now, and urge him to fire Rumsfeld.

  White House comment line
  202-456-1111 or
  202-456-1112

Bush has already taken the unusual step of publicly disclosing a reprimand
of Rumsfeld.  But he's got to go further, and dismiss him.

Please also call your Senators and Representative:

  Senator Larry Craig
  Washington, DC: 202-224-2752

  Senator Michael D. Crapo
  Washington, DC: 202-224-6142

  Congressman C. L. Otter
  Washington, DC: 202-225-6611

Let them know it's time for Rumsfeld to go.

Here are some highlights from the latest reports, illustrating why:

Presidential advisor Karl Rove "believes that it will take a generation for
the United States to live this scandal down in the Arab world." [2]

The Washington Post reports that "U.S. officials said Rumsfeld and the
Pentagon resisted appeals in recent months from the State Department and the
Coalition Provisional Authority to deal with problems relating to
detainees." [3]  The Post also links the culture that fostered torture to
Rumsfeld, in a searing editorial excerpted below.

Amazingly, Rumsfeld still doesn't seem to see that the despicable acts at
Abu Ghraib prison amounted to torture.  According to Salon.com:

  "My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which
  I believe technically is different from torture," Secretary of
  Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday. "I don't know if it is
  correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or
  that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not
  going to address the torture word." [4]

Rumsfeld's simply got to go.

Please make your calls today.  Please let us know you've called, at:

http://www.moveon.org/callrumsfeld.html?id=2801-1614596-zdb.m1gDWBJ2yueiLPpq
lQ

Thank you.

Sincerely,

- Carrie, Joan, Noah, Peter, and Wes
  The MoveOn.org team
  Thursday, May 6th, 2004

P.S.: Here are key excerpts from the Post editorial:

Mr. Rumsfeld's Responsibility

THE HORRIFIC abuses by American interrogators and guards at the Abu Ghraib
prison and at other facilities maintained by the U.S. military in Iraq and
Afghanistan can be traced, in part, to policy decisions and public
statements of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Beginning more than
two years ago, Mr. Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice
by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries. His
Pentagon ruled that the United States would no longer be bound by the Geneva
Conventions; that Army regulations on the interrogation of prisoners would
not be observed; and that many detainees would be held incommunicado and
without any independent mechanism of review. Abuses will take place in any
prison system. But Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions helped create a lawless regime
in which prisoners in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been humiliated,
beaten, tortured and murdered -- and in which, until recently, no one has
been held accountable.

The lawlessness began in January 2002 when Mr. Rumsfeld publicly declared
that hundreds of people detained by U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan
"do not have any rights" under the Geneva Conventions. That was not the
case: At a minimum, all those arrested in the war zone were entitled under
the conventions to a formal hearing to determine whether they were prisoners
of war or unlawful combatants. No such hearings were held, but then Mr.
Rumsfeld made clear that U.S. observance of the convention was now optional.
Prisoners, he said, would be treated "for the most part" in "a manner that
is reasonably consistent" with the conventions -- which, the secretary
breezily suggested, was outdated.

. . .

The Taguba report and others by human rights groups reveal that the
detention system Mr. Rumsfeld oversees has become so grossly distorted that
military police have abused or tortured prisoners under the direction of
civilian contractors and intelligence officers outside the military chain of
command -- not in "exceptional" cases, as Mr. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, but
systematically. Army guards have held "ghost" prisoners detained by the CIA
and even hidden these prisoners from the International Red Cross. Meanwhile,
Mr. Rumsfeld's contempt for the Geneva Conventions has trickled down: The
Taguba report says that guards at Abu Ghraib had not been instructed on them
and that no copies were posted in the facility.

The abuses that have done so much harm to the U.S. mission in Iraq might
have been prevented had Mr. Rumsfeld been responsive to earlier reports of
violations. Instead, he publicly dismissed or minimized such accounts. He
and his staff ignored detailed reports by respected human rights groups
about criminal activity at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, and they refused
to provide access to facilities or respond to most questions. In December
2002, two Afghan detainees died in events that were ruled homicides by
medical officials; only when the New York Times obtained the story did the
Pentagon confirm that an investigation was underway, and no results have yet
been announced. Not until other media obtained the photos from Abu Ghraib
did Mr. Rumsfeld fully acknowledge what had happened, and not until Tuesday
did his department disclose that 25 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Accountability for those deaths has been virtually
nonexistent: One soldie!
 r was punished with a dishonorable discharge.

On Monday Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman said that the secretary had not read Mr.
Taguba's report, which was completed in early March. Yesterday Mr. Rumsfeld
told a television interviewer that he still hadn't finished reading it, and
he repeated his view that the Geneva Conventions "did not precisely apply"
but were only "basic rules" for handling prisoners. His message remains the
same: that the United States need not be bound by international law and that
the crimes Mr. Taguba reported are not, for him, a priority. That attitude
has undermined the American military's observance of basic human rights and
damaged this country's ability to prevail in the war on terrorism.

[The full editorial is at:]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5840-2004May5.html

Footnotes:

[1] Friedman's complete column is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/opinion/06FRIE.html?th

[2] Rumsfeld Chastised by President for His Handling of Iraq Scandal
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/politics/06CABI.html?hp

[3] Bush Privately Chides Rumsfeld
Officials Say Pentagon Resisted Repeated Calls for Prison Changes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5733-2004May5.html

[4] "Abuse"? How about torture
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/05/06/torture/index_np.html

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