Kerry Renews Call for Rumsfeld to Resign

[Rose Siding]

PHILADELPHIA -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Wednesday renewed his call for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign and urged President Bush to appoint an independent investigation to provide reforms after a report faulted all levels of the military for abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

"It's not just the little person at the bottom who ought to pay the price of responsibility," Kerry said at a Philadelphia union hall. "The buck doesn't stop at the Pentagon."

A report released Tuesday by an independent panel led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger concluded that senior U.S. military leaders in Iraq and the Pentagon can be faulted for inattention to prisoner abuses, but it did not recommend that Rumsfeld stop down.

"What is missing from all these reports is accountability from the senior civilian leaders in the Pentagon and in the White House," Kerry said. "From the bottom of the chain of command all the way to the top, there needs to be accountability. The Schlesinger report makes clear that Secretary Rumsfeld was responsible for setting a climate where these types of abuses could occur."
...
"The time has come for our commander in chief to take charge," he said

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-kerry,0,1114555,print.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[CO Liberal]

1. CO Liberal Renews Call for Bush to Resign

:-)

[City Lights]

3. DesertDem seconds the motion!

Step down Mr. chimp. You are a disgrace to the office, the nation and the human race.

[wicket]

4. wicket thirds it

Do we have a fourth? :D

[11 Bravo]

6. I'm in!

n/t

[wicket]

7. woo hoo!

:D

[leetrisck]

2. Let's see if bush has the guts to fire rumsfield - he

won't - miserable little coward - if he doesn't fire him, then he is saying all is aok and the court martials should cease immediately for the other military personnel and bush needs to come out and say that Sgt. Darby was wrong to report it in the first place. Now, do you suppose that brave thief would do that?

[Joylaughter]

5. Praise Kerry

Kerry is a real leader. I'm glad the Swift Boat Liars are airing the '71 clips of Kerry speaking out against the atrocities committed in Viet Nam. Now he is speaking out against the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib. He is a champion of truth! Rummy should resign.

[AlGore-08.com]

8. The press trashed Gore when he called for this 3 months ago

http://www.algoredemocrats.com/news/gnn/EplAlZyAppAqEUJfrk.shtml

Rumsfeld may be toast this time... not a minute too soon.

[Karenina]

9. Kick!

W-A-A-A-AY past time for some heads to roll!

[Southsideirish]

11. Al and Howard Dean are the only courageous thinkers in this party.

The rest of them wait in the weeds to test the waters - then months later they peep out "me too."

[BiggJawn]

10. Rumsferatu will invoke the "Kenny-Boy Defense"...

"Oh, good golly Miss Molly mercy-mercy-me! I'm just the Secretary of Wa-uh, Defense! It's NOT MY CHOB, man, to know what the Lynndie Englands working for me are doing EVERY minute of EVERY day!"

Go spend "more time with your family" you un-dead ghoulish POS....

[coalition_unwilling]

13. Interesting little Rumsfailed segment on Democracy Now this a.m.

Turns out that the U.S. Army's CID investigation into Tiger Batallion war crimes during Vietnam (begun in 1971) was shelved in 1975 when Rumsfailed was Ford's Sec. of Defense! And when Cheney was Ford's Chief of Staff.

(Toledo Blade won a Pulitzer last year for exposing the 1967 atrocities\war crimes in the Central Highlands.)

[BiggJawn]

18. Same Clowns, Different Circus, eh?

Rumsferatu, Cheney, Unkle Karl, and a Cast of Thousands, all going back to Nixon and beyond....

"Hey, I know! Let's see if we can get away with that 'Doctor Strangelove' shit THIS time! Whatd'ya say, Rummy?"

[Dulcinea]

12. Tune in Friday around 5 pm.

God willing, it'll happen then.

[leesa]

14. Hear! Hear! Resign and face war crimes and treason trials.

[Disturbed]

15. Rumsfailed and Tenet shold be indicted.

Rumsfailed Admitted to Violating Geneva Convention

Rumsfailed admitted in public that when CIA Director Tenet requested that an Irai prisoner be sent to a secret Afghan/US Prison that Rumsfailed did so. After four months a DOD Attorney stated that this was an illegal act. Rumsfailed then ordered that this prisoner be sent back to Abu Graib but the prisoner was not listed at that location. That is two violations of the Geneva Convention. Tenet and Rumsfailed violated the Geneva convention, thereby also The Constitution of the USA. Not one complaint or charge was made regarding Rumsfailed and Tenet, not even by any Dem in Congress.

Does the US no longer follow the Geneva Convention or the Constitution of the USA?

It appears so.

[Just Me]

16. "Black-hole" Rummy should spend the rest of his living days,...

,...in a small, dark cell with bars as should all war criminals.

[BrooklynRider]

17. No accountability is a symptom of a failed management style.

[BiggJawn]

19. The "Talking Point" on Nat. PUTSCH Radio this AM....

Rumsferatu can NOT resign, SHOULD not resign, because "that will help our enemies". He has re-forged our armed forces to "answer the challenges of the post-Cold War world"...
And a bunch of other shit that I tuned out after figuring out it was Aural Sex for Rummy...

"That will help our enemies"...Uh, do they mean, when they say "enemies", those of us who want to see America get off her back and quit taking it from every CEO with $100,000 and a load to drop, or do they mean the shadowy, mythical Al-Ka-Seltzah?

[goforit]

20. WOW!!!!........Now that was a courageous statement ...finally!!!

[truthspeaker]

21. he should resign for ignoring the predictions of insurgency ALONE

Military and intelligence experts predicted this insurgency and offered suggestions to avert it. Rumsfeld ignored them. US troops died.

That used to be known as "dereliction of duty".

[54anickel]

22. Holding the Pentagon Accountable: For Abu Ghraib

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/opinion/26thurs1.html

For anyone with the time to wade through 400-plus pages and the resources to decode them, the two reports issued this week on the Abu Ghraib prison are an indictment of the way the Bush administration set the stage for Iraqi prisoners to be brutalized by American prison guards, military intelligence officers and private contractors.

The Army's internal investigation, released yesterday, showed that the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib went far beyond the actions of a few sadistic military police officers - the administration's chosen culprits. It said that 27 military intelligence soldiers and civilian contractors committed criminal offenses, and that military officials hid prisoners from the Red Cross. Another report, from a civilian panel picked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, offers the dedicated reader a dotted line from President Bush's decision to declare Iraq a front in the war against terror, to government lawyers finding ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, to Mr. Rumsfeld's bungled planning of the occupation and understaffing of the ground forces in Iraq, to the hideous events at Abu Ghraib prison.

That was a service to the public, but the civilian panel did an enormous disservice by not connecting those dots and walking away from any real exercise in accountability. Instead, Pentagon officials who are never named get muted criticism for issuing confusing memos and not monitoring things closely enough. This is all cast as "leadership failure" - the 21st-century version of the Nixonian "mistakes were made" evasion - that does not require even the mildest reprimand for Mr. Rumsfeld, who should have resigned over this disaster months ago. Direct condemnation is reserved for the men and women in the field, from the military police officers sent to guard prisoners without training to the three-star general in Iraq.

Still, the dots are there, making it clear that the road to Abu Ghraib began well before the invasion of Iraq, when the administration created the category of "unlawful combatants" for suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban who were captured in Afghanistan and imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Interrogators wanted to force these prisoners to talk in ways that are barred by American law and the Geneva Conventions, and on Aug. 1, 2002, Justice Department lawyers produced the infamous treatise on how to construe torture as being legal.

In December 2002, Mr. Rumsfeld authorized things like hooding prisoners, using dogs to terrify them, forcing them into "stress positions" for long periods, stripping them, shaving them and isolating them. All this was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, but President Bush had already declared on Feb. 7, 2002, that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Al Qaeda.

more...

So all Iraqi prisoners were members of Al Qaeda?