The View From Jail

While Donald Rumsfeld, like those failed Secretaries of Defense before him, is probably already sentenced to a slow and painful death of the conscience, the German government wants to add a physical component:

Lawyers for inmates of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay asked German prosecutors Tuesday to open a war crimes investigation of outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials for their alleged roles in abuse at the detention centers.

Although the lawyers who filed the lawsuit acknowledged while there was little chance of seeing Rumsfeld in a German jail, the point was simply to increase the pressure on top brass they say are culpable. German federal prosecutors said they would examine the case.

"We are not expecting that Rumsfeld will appear in a court, but we are hoping investigators will begin looking into the case," said Wolfgang Kaleck, a German lawyer involved in the suit.

I guess we're so used to outsourcing in this country that even our war crimes tribunals will be administered by another country.

What's interesting here is that Janis Karpinski has decided to assist the prosecution:

Former U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq, said she would testify against her superiors because only a handful of low-ranking soldiers have been convicted in the abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.

Karpinski, who was relieved of her command and demoted to colonel last year, said she wanted to "be a voice for my soldiers."

"They were tried and convicted in the world court before they ever set foot in any courtroom ... while people who are far more culpable and responsible have walked away blameless," Karpinski said during a presentation of the case in Berlin.

It's very clear that there was torture committed by US troops in locations around the world in service to the war on terror. It's very clear that the authorization for that torture reached the highest levels. It's become clear, just today, that the CIA was writing memos authorizing the aggressive interrogation of detainees. We know that the Pentagon was writing the same memos. As well as the Special Counsel for the President.

It's also clear that this business of torturing has had a deleterious effect on human rights around the world, to the extent that our coalition partners are licking their chops at the prospect of weakening their own standards for torture. It creates terrorists out of detainees later found innocent, gives the enemy a recruiting tool and made our own troops more susceptible to the same manner of treatment. It's clear that the results for these techniques are spotty at best, and revealing of false information at worst. And it's clear that torture debases all of those involved to such an extent, the more noble among them don't wish to go on living:

In 2003 a young soldier died in Iraq, but there was a mystery. Alyssa Peterson was a local Flagstaff girl who was one of our first war fatalities. Alyssa was also best friend to the daughter of one of my friends. We talked about what could have happened. She was shot with a service rifle. Was it murder or suicide? What happened? Well finally someone searched for an answer.

"Army specialist Alyssa Peterson was an Arabic speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at the Tal-afar airbase in far northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border....Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed [...]

Instead she was assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards. She was sent to suicide prevention training. But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle."

Someone higher than a buck private out to face consequences for this behavior, which has destroyed countless lives and harmed our national security. What the German government is doing is largely symbolic. Nobody reasonably expects Don Rumsfeld to spend any time in a jail in Berlin.

But he should.