The following is an excerpt from an article in The Progressive called “Stripping Rumsfeld and Bush of Impunity” by Matthew Rothschild (July issue; for the entire article go to http://progressive.org/?q=mag_impunity). Thanks to Gerry Condon for mentioning this action from the Amnesty International USA during his visit/presentation to SLO.


The Bush Administration’s legal troubles don’t end with Sanchez or Gonzales. They go right to the top: to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush himself. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International USA say there is “prima facie” evidence against Rumsfeld for war crimes and torture. And Amnesty International USA says there is also “prima facie” evidence against Bush for war crimes and torture. (According to Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, “prima facie evidence” is “evidence sufficient to establish a fact or to raise a presumption of fact unless rebutted.”)

Amnesty International USA has even taken the extraordinary step of calling on officials in other countries to apprehend Bush and Rumsfeld and other high-ranking members of the Administration who have played a part in the torture scandal.

Foreign governments should “uphold their obligations under international law by investigating U.S. officials implicated in the development or implementation of interrogation techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment,” the group said in a May 25 statement. William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, added, “If the United States permits the architects of torture policy to get off scot-free, then other nations will be compelled” to take action.

The Geneva Conventions and the torture treaty “place a legally binding obligation on states that have ratified them to exercise universal jurisdiction over persons accused of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions,” Amnesty International USA said. “If anyone suspected of involvement in the U.S. torture scandal visits or transits through foreign territories, governments could take legal steps to ensure that such individuals are investigated and charged with applicable crimes.”

When these two leading human rights organizations make such bold claims about the President and the Secretary of Defense, we need to take the question of executive criminality seriously.

And we have to ask ourselves, where is the accountability? Who has the authority to ascertain whether these high officials committed war crimes and torture, and if they did, to bring them to justice?

The independent counsel law is no longer on the books, so that can’t be relied on. Attorney General Gonzales is not about to investigate himself, Rumsfeld, or his boss. And Republicans who control Congress have shown no interest in pursuing the torture scandal, much less drawing up bills of impeachment.

Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU, the American Bar Association, and Human Rights First (formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) have joined in a call for a special prosecutor. But that decision is up to Gonzales and ultimately Bush.

“It’s a complete joke” to expect Gonzales to appoint a special prosecutor, concedes Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

John Sifton, Afghanistan specialist and military affairs researcher for Human Rights Watch, is not so sure. “Do I think this would happen right now? No,” he says. “But in the middle of the Watergate scandal, very few people thought the President would resign.” If more information comes out, and if the American public demands an investigation, and if there is a change in the control of the Senate, Sifton believes Gonzales may end up with little choice.

Human Rights Watch and other groups are also calling for Congress to appoint an independent commission, similar to the 9/11 one, to investigate the torture scandal.

“Unless a special counsel or an independent commission are named, and those who designed or authorized the illegal policies are held to account, all the protestations of ‘disgust’ at the Abu Ghraib photos by President George W. Bush and others will be meaningless,” concludes Human Rights Watch’s April report “Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees.”

But even as it denounces the “substantial impunity that has prevailed until now,” Human Rights Watch is not sanguine about the likelihood of such inquiries. “There are obviously steep political obstacles in the way of investigating a sitting Defense Secretary,” it notes in its report.

By not pursuing senior officials who may have been involved in ordering war crimes or torture, the United States may be further violating international law, according to Human Rights Watch. “Each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, whenever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction,” says the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Geneva Conventions have a similar requirement.

Stymied by the obstacles along the customary routes of accountability, the ACLU and Human Rights First are suing Rumsfeld in civil court on behalf of plaintiffs who have been victims of torture. The Center for Constitutional Rights is suing on behalf of a separate group of clients. The center also filed a criminal complaint in Germany against Rumsfeld and Gonzales, along with nine others. The center argued that Germany was “a court of last resort,” since “the U.S. government is not willing to open an investigation into these allegations against these officials.” The case was dismissed.

Amnesty International’s call for foreign countries to nab Rumsfeld and Bush also seems unlikely to be heeded any time soon. How, physically, could another country arrest Bush, for instance? And which country would want to face the wrath of Washington for doing so?

But that we have come this far—where the only option for justice available seems to be to rely on officials of other governments to apprehend our own—is a damning indictment in and of itself.

Reprinted from Matthew Rothschild’s article in The Progressive called “Stripping Rumsfeld and Bush of Impunity” (July, 2005 issue; for the entire article go to http://progressive.org/?q=mag_impunity).



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