New Quaker Notebook

After losing his job as Field Marshall, outgoing Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld is probably not looking like Smiling Bob these days, but he seems to be quite happy nonetheless. He was caught handing out jokes at the annual dinner for the American Spectator on Wednesday. Among his funny stories was a piece about the Pentagon, big institutions that don't like change, and a fable about a boy and a man and a donkey:

The joke, as Rumsfeld told it, is basically this: The old man tells the boy he can ride the donkey but people they pass complain that the youth is letting the old fellow walk while he rides. So they switch places, and now the bystanders say it's awful that the man is making the boy walk. According to Rumsfeld, it ends this way: "So they both got on the donkey, they come to the bridge, the donkey can't handle it. He falls in the water and drowns. And the moral of the story is: if you try to please everybody, you're going to lose your donkey."¹

Funny man, that Rumsfeld. His laughter may be drowned out by the sound of a prison door closing if the Germans have their way. For a second time, civil-rights groups have filed suit in German court seeking a probe of war crimes by Bush administration officials and others in US federal service.²

1. "The Rumsfeld Kiss of Death," Editor & Publisher, November 17, 2006.
2. "German lawyers file lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld," Taipei Times, November 16, 2006. The lawsuit was filed with the German federal prosecutor on Tuesday on behalf of 12 detainees, and names 11 other current and former US officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. An earlier attempt to force the German courts to probe Rumsfeld and others for war crimes failed after the German prosecutor said that the US first had to pursue legal action. That complaint named Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, a senior defense official, and seven US military officers. See "Rumsfeld war crimes probe rejected," Aljazeera.net, February 11, 2005.

Turn that comma into a period

The 110th Congress should have a long list of things to do when it convenes in January. High on the list should be the dismantling of the gulag in Cuba.

On Tuesday Deutsche Welle reported on Murat Kurnaz's account of torture and abuse at the detention center in Guantánamo Bay. The German-born Turk, released in August because there was insufficient evidence of his involvement in terrorist activities, went to Pakistan "to visit holy places and take religious courses" and was arrested there after 9/11 and taken to a prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, before being transferred to Camp X-Ray (now Camp Delta) in Cuba. At Guantánamo his abuse included electric shocks, having his head submerged in water, deprivation of food and water, and being shackled or suspended. '"They tell you 'you are from Al-Qaeda' and when you say 'no' they give the (electric) current to your feet.... As you keep saying 'no' this goes on for two or three hours," he said."' He said he had been shacked to a ceiling for several days: '"They take you down in the mornings when a doctor comes to see whether you can endure more," he said. "They let you sit when the interrogator comes.... They take you down about three times a day so you do not die."'

How he got to Cuba is surely one issue, but why he remained there for four years was revealed in part in yesterday's Editor & Publisher, which called attention to a new report from Seton Hall University law school professor Mark Denbeaux and his son Joshua.¹ For their report, No-Hearing Hearings [pdf], they analyzed the transcripts and records of US military hearings of 393 detainees, and report that the administrative procedure that resulted in the classification as enemy combatants included no habeas corpus provisions: the military produced no witnesses in any hearing and denied every detainees' requests to view the evidence against them. While the military holds Combatant Status Review Tribunals for each of the detainees, including annual status reviews, the Denbeauxs report that these rarely result in release. In three of the 102 such cases reviewed, the Tribunal found the detainees either not or no longer enemy combatants, but the Defense Department subsequently ordered new Tribunals in which the detainees were then found to be enemy combatants. The new Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively enshrines this practice into law, preventing non-US citizens held as enemy combatants from challenging their detentions in civilian courts.

Alas, yesterday the US military announced its plans to go bigger with the gulag in Cuba by expanding into a $125 million compound capable of holding up to 1,200 enemy combatants.² The generous compound will also include three courtrooms to permit simultaneous trials.

In the shade of the past

We shouldn't get too excited about the prospects of undoing everything that the Bush administration has done to the US during its long control over Congress and the federal courts. It's not so much that there's too much work to do, but the Democratic leadership is already talking about "moving forward" and that may mean going so fast into the future that the past gets too distant to remember. Perhaps that's so we forget who all helped us to get here today.

New Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said last month that she planned to drain the GOP swamp,¹ but now she's making nice with the president, and Harry Reid, incoming Senate Majority Leader, said on Friday: "The election's over, the only way to move forward is with bipartisanship and openness and to get some results."² Rising Democratic star Barack Obama also used the same "moving forward" language last month in an interview with Charlie Rose.

There is so much to do, and undo. Ending the US involvement in Iraq, restoring habeas corpus rights, undoing the torture provisions of recent legislation, stopping NSA civilian surveillance, renewing oversight of the rebuilding in Iraq, the Patriot Act (one and two)—and that's not even including investigations into war crimes by the Bush administration, war profiteering, government contracts made in response to Hurricane Katrina.... Henry Waxman, who chairs the Government Reform Committee, says that there is so much to investigate that "The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose."³ But we shouldn't forget that in all of this the Congressional Democrats, with a few notable exceptions, were complicit in setting up this whole scenario.

And then there's the ongoing bloodletting in Iraq. It's so bad that Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, today said he plans to reshuffle his cabinet.⁴ That should get some response: some of his cabinet members may actually have to leave the Emerald City (a.k.a. the Green Zone) and go out into the streets of Baghdad and suffer with their constituents.

1. "Pelosi Says She Would Drain GOP 'Swamp'," AP/Washington Post, October 6, 2006.
2. "Bush: Time to show 'we can work together'," CNN, November 10, 2006.
3. "Waxman set to probe areas of Bush gov't," AP/Yahoo! News, November 10, 2006. Article is archived at Truthout.org.
4. "Iraq prime minister plans big reshuffle," Financial Times, November 12, 2006.

Smiling Donald

Turn that comma into a period

In the shade of the past