If there is one country that is on the lookout for war crimes and for facist behavior, Germany is it. The rg trials went into the 1950's. "Taking orders" was resoundingly dismissed as a grounds for inhumane treatment of either soldiers or of people who were imprisoned just because the government didn't like them.
So now comes the turn of the wheel: Rumsfeld Sued for Alleged War Crimes. If there is any country that is aware of what a war crime is, Germany heads the list. And it looks like they are about the only country with the courage to stand up and say that what applied to them should also apply to others.
Just by putting his name on authorization to create "ghost detainees", Rumsfeld implicated himself. And this German language source [via dKos's Downeast Dem] has a whole list of people whose actions will be challenged *some* where:
1. den Verteidigungsminister der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, Donald H. Rumsfeld,
2. den ehemaligen Direktor der Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), George Tenet,
3. den Generalleutnant Ricardo S. Sanchez, Heidelberg, Deutschland,
4. den Generalmajor Walter Wojdakowski,
5. die Brigadegeneralin Janis Karpinski,
6. den Oberstleutnant Jerry L. Phillabaum,
7. den Oberst Thomas Pappas,
8. den Oberstleutnant Stephen L. Jordan,
9. den Generalmajor Geoffrey Miller,
10. den Unterstaatssekretär für Nachrichtendienste im US-Verteidigungsministerium, Stephen Cambone,
Only a few of those names are familiar even to people who follow the news. It will be interesting to see how this goes -- and especially interesting to see of the US gives Sanchez an emergency transfer to another country. At the beginning of the Abu Ghraib revelations, Sanchez said that the entire chain of command from him down bore responsibility. I suspect that the military would reject that point of view because of its wide-ranging implications. So it will be instructive to watch the news over the next week or two.
