Should Rummy resign, part III
Last month I posted here and here on why Donald Rumsfeld should resign. I’ll just cut and paste this Eric Schmitt/Thom Shanker story in the New York Times for why I stand by that belief: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, ordered military ...
Last month I posted here and here on why Donald Rumsfeld should resign. I'll just cut and paste this Eric Schmitt/Thom Shanker story in the New York Times for why I stand by that belief:
Last month I posted here and here on why Donald Rumsfeld should resign. I’ll just cut and paste this Eric Schmitt/Thom Shanker story in the New York Times for why I stand by that belief:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, ordered military officials in Iraq last November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a high-level detention center there but not list him on the prison’s rolls, senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said Wednesday. This prisoner and other “ghost detainees” were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy, officials said. Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who in February investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criticized the practice of allowing ghost detainees there and at other detention centers as “deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law.” This prisoner, who has not been named, is believed to be the first to have been kept off the books at the orders of Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Tenet. He was not held at Abu Ghraib, but at another prison, Camp Cropper, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, officials said.
UPDATE: This Reuters story doesn’t comfort me much either:
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged on Thursday that he ordered the secret detention of an Iraqi terrorism suspect held for more than seven months near Baghdad without notifying the Red Cross…. “We should have registered him (the prisoner) much sooner than we did,” Pentagon Deputy General Counsel Daniel Dellorto told the briefing. “That’s something that we’ll just have to examine, as to whether there was a breakdown in the quickness with which we registered him,” he said…. Rumsfeld said the man’s case was unique, but he was vague when reporters asked whether the United States was holding other “ghost” prisoners without Red Cross knowledge in Iraq…. In March, Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib, criticized the holding of “ghost” detainees as “deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law.” Rumsfeld was asked how this case differed from the practice Taguba criticized. “It is just different, that’s all,” he said.
Sorry, that last answer doesn’t cut it for me.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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