Fire Rumsfeld

Not sure if this qualifies as LBN, but it just showed up in my mail from moveon.org. Since it's an email, I'm posting the entire thing.

"Dear MoveOn member,

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 John B. Breaux
Washington, DC: 202-224-4623

Senator Mary L. Landrieu
Washington, DC: 202-224-5824

Congressman William J. Jefferson
Washington, DC: 202-225-6636

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=2801-3358903-_yyHYtMxYPb9F_denZ7f5w

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 soldier 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.


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"

I have 3 emails all calling for Rummy's resignation

including Bush. Rumsfeld may well become a sacrificial lamb, especially if information from the other 30 or so investigations determines the same things happening as in Abu Graab (sp). But I doubt it. Bush only fires dissenters; gross incompetence isn't even on the performance evaluation.

I heard tonite bush was sent letters by the Red Cross & other organizations in Dec 2003.

Seems to all fit now..Clarke complained bush"ignored" the warnings before 9/11 and it seems he did the same with the prison situation.

They should be going after bush.

Bush-Cheny-Rumsfeld...one head, one body.

It was a fraternity prank. A bunch of soldiers under pressure letting off some steam. Like, Rush is an authority on what it's like to be in the military.

What excuse did Rush use to get out of the military? An anal cyst? He's obviously never treated the thing because look at how big it's gotten.

I don't know what's more disgusting...the news of the treatment of the prisoners or these right-wing idiots on talk radio covering Bush's ass and spinning this story.

the question is when will the firings begin? And who will be the first?

Once the first one goes down, the rest will be not far behind.

I just hope we don't have a military coup in the process. We are living in a very dangerous time at the moment. And U hope our so called democratic leadership is making plans for the fall of Bu$hCo so we can have a relatively smooth transition of power.

I called the white house and my reps yesterday - repug country - they tried to ask me why I wasn't willing to wait for the investigation and "...wasn't it enough for the top military leaders in charge to be held acccountable?.."
I said " He is the top and the country can't afford to wait - he should be offering his resignation to the president!" i also said that we would be firing the president in November
everyone needs to call NOW

White House comment line
202-456-1111 or
202-456-1112
Senator Arlen Specter
Washington, DC: 202-224-4254

Senator Richard J. Santorum
Washington, DC: 202-224-6324

Congressman Don Sherwood
Washington, DC: 202-225-3731