It looks like Donald Rumsfeld will be passing up one of those top-dollar gigs with a defense contractor after he leaves the Secretary of Defense post in January. A job like that would require international travel, and Rumsfeld is mere days away from being indicted as a war criminal in a German court. If he leaves the United States, he could be arrested and prosecuted for his role in grevious human rights abuses that have occured on his watch and at times under his supervision.Alberto Gonzalez and George Tenet also are facing these same charges, along with Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
The case revolves around charges made by eleven Iraqi plaintiffs who were confined at Abu Ghraib prison and a high-level Saudi detainee who admitted to being an operative of al Qae'da after being tortured at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
The case is also bolstered by the testimony of Brig. General Janis Karpinski, the U.S. Army officer who was in charge of all prison operations in Iraq at the time the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.
The charges are being filed in Germany because German law provides for "universal jurisdiction" which allows for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world.
In 2004 the German prosecutors nearly brought a narrower set of charges against Rumsfeld and other administration officials, but backed off when the United States offered assurances that the "situation was being dealt with."
With the passage of the Military Commissions Act on September 29 of this year, those officials are shielded from prosecution in the United States, no matter how grevious and clear-cut their wrongdoing.
