Article

2006-11-10 Europe

Germany Wants to Procecute Rumsfeld & Others

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Posted by BigEd 2006-11-10 14:04|| || Front Page|| [11140 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 An act of war in my book. Swift and painful retaliation is due just for raising the suggestion. Withdraw remaining US forces in Germany. Put them in Poland.

Posted by fmr mil contractor 2006-11-10 14:12|| 2006-11-10 14:12|| Front Page Top

Dresden 1945. Don't mess with us, Germany.
(And I am 1/2 German ancestry. What a disgrace)

Posted by BigEd 2006-11-10 14:17|| 2006-11-10 14:17|| Front Page Top

#3 The rest of the world really wants us to tell them to go fuck themselves, don't they. I'm feeling more and more isolationist every day.

Posted by DarthVader">DarthVader 2006-11-10 14:29|| 2006-11-10 14:29|| Front Page Top

#4 Better call your doctor, Adam Zagorin. It appears your hardon has lasted for more then four hours.
If I'm Runmsfeld, I more worried about getting my leaves raked up this weekend.

Posted by tu3031 2006-11-10 14:32|| 2006-11-10 14:32|| Front Page Top

#5 Just to be clear:

Excerpt:

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.

This is a lawsuit filed by assorted terrorists, alleged and otherwise. The article also states that Germany was chosen as the venue because ...

(Excerpt)

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 law was passed before Chancellor Merkel took office. "Germany" did not initiate the lawsuit, despite what the misleading headline states. Just another set of thugs determined to divide and subjugate the West.

Posted by mrp 2006-11-10 14:35|| 2006-11-10 14:35|| Front Page Top

#6 Yeah....how does it feel to want?

Posted by Rex Mundi 2006-11-10 14:35|| 2006-11-10 14:35|| Front Page Top

#7 Germany is letting this trail go forward. Time to make Germany hurt some more. This equates to a hostile act aginst the US of A. Time to send Germany's trade with the US of A into the krapper.

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-11-10 14:43|| www.sockpuppetofdoom.com]">[www.sockpuppetofdoom.com] 2006-11-10 14:43|| Front Page Top

#8 Disgrace now-Col Karpinski (ret.) is involved. She is in Germany now "helping the plaintiffs" (See Drudge also)

Posted by BigEd 2006-11-10 14:44|| 2006-11-10 14:44|| Front Page Top

#9 sockpuppet has it exactly. Germany may not have initiated this, but they are letting it proceed unhindered.

Posted by BigEd 2006-11-10 14:45|| 2006-11-10 14:45|| Front Page Top

#10 Plaintiffs to include Mohammad al-Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker". Also from the article link: 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 ."

Posted by trailing wife 2006-11-10 14:45|| 2006-11-10 14:45|| Front Page Top

#11 Thanks for the backup trailing wife...

Posted by BigEd 2006-11-10 14:54|| 2006-11-10 14:54|| Front Page Top

#12 former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq

She lives right up the road from me. Shall I TP her house or something?

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2006-11-10 14:54|| 2006-11-10 14:54|| Front Page Top

#13 Mike K. : Is her house YELLOW - The color of cowards?

Posted by BigEd 2006-11-10 14:59|| 2006-11-10 14:59|| Front Page Top

#14 No TP. Better to just pace in front carrying a sign that reads "Traitor" on one side and "Idiot" on the other.

Posted by Darrell 2006-11-10 15:02|| 2006-11-10 15:02|| Front Page Top

#15 Consider this an "all points bulletin" for TGA.

TGA, what say the man on the cobblestone street to this latest insult to the USA from Old Europe?

Posted by Mark Z 2006-11-10 15:07|| 2006-11-10 15:07|| Front Page Top

#16 Ha! In Rummy's world, this is as troublesome as a cloudy day. Initiated by a jackass and will amount to nothing.

Posted by JerseyMike 2006-11-10 15:08|| 2006-11-10 15:08|| Front Page Top

#17 If the perpetrators are punished, there is no war crime farther up the chain of command. If Karpinski is claiming it was ordered, then SHE is also guilty of a war crime, as she passed the orders to her subordinates despite it being her duty to refuse illegal orders.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford 2006-11-10 15:10|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-11-10 15:10|| Front Page Top

#18 Yep, nasty stuff when cynical politicians remove national security and foreign policy decisions from the elected officials of nation-states and place them in the hands of non-governmenal tribunals accountable to no one. Chickens coming home to roost and all that.

The Germans signed up for the ICC. We would have, except that a GOP-controlled Senate prevented a Bill Clinton signing ceremony from taking place. Close call, that. Now Germany faces a fork in the road: One path leads to the continuance of the NATO alliance, on the other path - American Isolationism, with all the happy pre-1941 memories that brings.

In 1998, more than 160 nations signed the treaty creating the ICC. Israel has signed it, too.

The Islamists are going to flood the ICC signatories with lawsuits against the US and its allies. This is just the beginning.

Posted by mrp 2006-11-10 15:10|| 2006-11-10 15:10|| Front Page Top

#19 Was she commander during the Abu Graib fiasco?

Posted by Mike N. 2006-11-10 15:14|| 2006-11-10 15:14|| Front Page Top

#20 Of course we could have some horse manure delivered and spread just outside her property line in front of her house. We don't tresspass. we make NO physical threats. We are Americans, and that is the way the rest of the world act. We just find a way to tell her what we think of her sorry fat ass. By spreading horse shit, we are just contributing to the health of the local plant life, you see... Problem is, she might LIKE the smell...

Posted by BigEd 2006-11-10 15:15|| 2006-11-10 15:15|| Front Page Top

#21 Former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was demoted to Colonel for her role in the whole affair.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janis_Karpinski

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Posted by Darrell 2006-11-10 15:26|| 2006-11-10 15:26|| Front Page Top

#22 Correction

The US did sign the ICC treaty, but it was not ratified by the US Senate.

According to Wikipedia, as of August, 2006 more than 102 countries have ratified or acceded to the ICC.

Posted by mrp 2006-11-10 15:35|| 2006-11-10 15:35|| Front Page Top

#23 102 signatories?

I guess that limits Rummys choice of vacation spots, though I think some of the smaller countries would think twice with a couple of strategically routed B-2s buzzing a presidential palace or parliament building....

Posted by BigEd 2006-11-10 15:41|| 2006-11-10 15:41|| Front Page Top

#24 I spit when I saw Karpinski making the TV rounds to defend herself. She whined. She said that people didn't obey her because she's a girl. (OK, female, but it was highschool tone and pitch and body language.)

She NEVER once admitted or took responsibility for her failure to establish and enforce appropriate standards in the prison. Instead she was a placeholder, an empty uniform way out of her depth. Of the 4 battalions under her, 1 was strak because of the LtCol in charge. The others were disasters -- no inspections, no enforcement of standards when Karpinski bothered to promulgate any, no disciplinary action when people were caught acting up. And I don't just mean WRT interrogations -- Karpinski's command was full of alchohol, near-public rutting (way beyond sexual fraternization, we're talking verging on orgies) etc.

Karpinski is a poster child for everything that was wrong about the post-Vietnam decision to push critical capabilities into the Reserves and Guard. That was done by the generals to make it really hard for presidents and Congress to go to war. It was a stupid policy when it was adopted and it has had fatal results for us in Iraq. Its chief cheerleader was Colin Powell. He wanted all the glory of being an army general without ever going to war unless there was a black and white situation that rallied 99.99999% of the population behind it.

WWII didn't have 99.99999% support at home. The Powell Doctrine was a recipe for promotions without wartime engagement. It rotted out our military capability and resolve. It was a reaction against Vietnam rather than a forward looking approach and like most reactions, it was incredibly narrow sighted.

A good part of Rumsfeld's push on technology is his recognition that the US has become a fairly decadent, Euro-style culture -- at least to the degree that the cadre of people willing to seriously defend the country is shrinking year by year. His response was to try to equip them with everything we could develop that would leverage each and every warfighter with massive intelligence, data collection and firepower.

He was reportedly reluctant to take on Iraq precisely because this stuff wasn't really in place yet. He was right about the results, I think.

The Dems and the generals won this one. But at a huge huge cost to the country. I don't know if we can recover. But I do know that I and a lot of other researchers are working our tails off to advance some of the technologies for use on our borders and in other operations. We're going to need them -- we will not have the numbers of boots on the ground to do what will need doing over the next 20 years with manpower alone. It's a race against time and I don't know who will win. But some of us are pushing hard for it to be us.

Posted by lotp 2006-11-10 15:43|| 2006-11-10 15:43|| Front Page Top

#25 Belgium used to be the preferred site for universal jurisdiction cases, but they changed their laws after the U.S. threatened to move NATO headquarters out of the country.

The German government may not have instituted this action, but it is German law that allows these cases to go forward.

Posted by DoDo 2006-11-10 15:47|| 2006-11-10 15:47|| Front Page Top

#26 Before you go ballistic on Germany
By Michelle Malkin · November 10, 2006 02:33 PM

Yes, yes, I know, there's a big siren up at Drudge over Time magazine's exclusive on a lawsuit being filed against Don Rumsfeld over "prison abuse."

The German government isn't filing the lawsuit. It's 11 Iraqis and a Saudi who went court-shopping and filed in Germany because the country "provides 'universal jurisdiction' allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world." A previous lawsuit was filed on similar grounds and was dismissed. Yes, Germany has its share of weasels. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel isn't one of them and outrage at the country is premature. Calls to close our bases in Germany over this hyped news story are, with all due respect, silly.

The lawsuit hasn't even been filed yet. The Time blurb is a Friday afternoon freebie press release for the left-wing Center for Constitutional Rights--milking Rumsfeld's resignation for all the publicity they can get.

http://michellemalkin.com/

Posted by doc 2006-11-10 15:52|| 2006-11-10 15:52|| Front Page Top

#27 One ammendment to my comment above, re: Rumsfeld's motivation for pushing technology (netcentric warfare, etc.).

I do believe he recognized that we will need to depend on a much smaller pool of warriors to defend us than in past generations. But that's not the only consideration he talks about. He recognizes that info / communications tech WILL have a major role to play in future operations. If we don't maintain and extend our dominance in these areas, someone else will. And we will never have the numbers to compensate for that with bodies, even assuming that more bodies would be effective against an enemy armed that way.

Posted by lotp 2006-11-10 16:03|| 2006-11-10 16:03|| Front Page Top

#28 Yep, lotp.

Posted by twobyfour 2006-11-10 16:10|| 2006-11-10 16:10|| Front Page Top

#29 I'm glad Michelle Malkin agrees with me :)

Posted by mrp 2006-11-10 16:12|| 2006-11-10 16:12|| Front Page Top

#30 Michelle, perhaps...time will tell

However, German politics is comprised of many extreme left-leaning elements of which Merkel (being in a marginally aligned coalition) has little direct influence.

The Pentagon and Rumsfeld took considerable precaution in 2004 with the yerman loons first tried this shit. Rummy cancelled his trip to a military conference in Germany under the 2004 threat, until the Germany judicary backed off (due to Rumsfeld being in executive office at the time ((think Chirac)).

The terrorists go after the yermans, the yermans go after Rummy, how do you say appeasement in German?

Posted by Captain America 2006-11-10 16:47|| 2006-11-10 16:47|| Front Page Top

#31 Words written on a lawn with 24D result in 5 years of the words or 5 feet of digging or a lawn replaced with corn.

Posted by 3dc 2006-11-10 18:34|| 2006-11-10 18:34|| Front Page Top

#32 It's still a good excuse to bring home the troops and high end manufacturing jobs to the US. The $60 billion German trade deficit will directly employ 1 million with very comfortable middle class wages.

Posted by ed 2006-11-10 18:42|| 2006-11-10 18:42|| Front Page Top

#33 Leave Germany and you accelerate their transfer of military technology to China.

Posted by lotp 2006-11-10 19:10|| 2006-11-10 19:10|| Front Page Top

#34 So you would be held hostage by that?

Posted by ed 2006-11-10 19:13|| 2006-11-10 19:13|| Front Page Top

#35 It's not "being held hostage". It's a blocking move.

Posted by lotp 2006-11-10 19:25|| 2006-11-10 19:25|| Front Page Top

#36 One thing that stuck with me (may have been the novel WW3: August 1985, by Gen. Sir John Hackett) was that when Germans no longer needed Americans to defend her, they would, at best, become a lukewarm rival. It seems to me that we should not love the Germans more than they love us.

The Germans will do what they believe is their interest. If they believe shifting Uncle Sam's forces or making blood money is in their overall interest, they will do it (witness selling chem and nuke tech to the ME). Balancing that is the probability the US will spend untold billions setting up a missile shield for the Europeans, with the Germans a primary beneficiary in both free protection and tech transfer (e.g. MEADS).

If the Germans wish to actively weaken the US, Japan, etc in Asia, then the US is under no obligation to stay with a hands off approach to their little EU project and they can again live with a 5 minute warning before nuclear destruction.

In addition, the US holds the ace card with China since they have a $100 billion trade deficit with the world, sans USA. The $200+ billion income stream from the US can stop in less time than it takes for a container ship to cross the Pacific.

Posted by ed 2006-11-10 19:44|| 2006-11-10 19:44|| Front Page Top

#37 at best, become a lukewarm friend or rival

Posted by ed 2006-11-10 19:51|| 2006-11-10 19:51|| Front Page Top

#38 Five years ago, the mere thought of German troops and naval vessels being deployed overseas would have shocked Germans and the world alike. Now, the German Navy is deployed in the Med and around the Horn of Africa, while Germans soldiers participate as part of the ISAF in Afghanistan. These deployments are bitterly opposed by the German Left. This week, the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) renewed Germany's defense committment to the WoT for another year by a vote of 436-101.

The ICC was long in the making, a UN monstrosity composed by resentful states and anti-US NGOs. Its purpose is to dissolve Western alliances and social structures and to make a world safer for tyrants and lethal non-state ideologies. It will take awhile to neuter it, and it will take strong leaders like Angela Merkel to do the thankless work. So this crap about abandoning an ally whose soldiers are in the field with ours is, frankly, crude and short sighted.

BTW, the legal team representing the 11 "plaintiffs" is an American leftist organization. So what can we say to the Germans about their laws, hein?

This posturing gives me a headache. I'm going to
watch this ad a few more times to lower the BP.

Posted by mrp 2006-11-10 19:57|| 2006-11-10 19:57|| Front Page Top

#39 This week, the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) renewed Germany's defense committment to the WoT for another year by a vote of 436-101.

mrp, it's possible more people voted for the deployment than were actually deployed. if i had my druthers i'd trade them all in for columbian units, at least they've fought this sort of war effectively in the recent past.

Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2006-11-10 20:47|| 2006-11-10 20:47|| Front Page Top

#40 As a great man might have said: You go to war with the allies you got, not with the allies you'd rather have.

Posted by mrp 2006-11-10 20:58|| 2006-11-10 20:58|| Front Page Top

#41 Who is Karpinski's lawyer? Ramsey Clark?

Posted by GK 2006-11-10 21:21|| 2006-11-10 21:21|| Front Page Top

#42 Say karpinski enjoys the limelight. If she chooses to chase cameras via politics, what party would accept her with open arms?

My guess would be the party that includes john "ABSCAM" murtha, john "ouch that sliver really really hurts" kerry and bill "I loath the military" clinton. She'll fit right in.

Posted by Lanny Ddub 2006-11-10 22:39|| 2006-11-10 22:39|| Front Page Top

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