Bill Clinton-Appointed Judge Allows American To Sue Donald Rumsfeld Over Torture

This stinks to high hell:

A federal judge has ruled that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a former U.S. military contractor who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq.


The lawsuit lays out a dramatic tale of the disappearance of the then-civilian contractor, an Army veteran in his 50s whose identity is being withheld from court filings for fear of retaliation. Attorneys for the man, who speaks five languages and worked as a translator for Marines collecting intelligence in Iraq, say he was preparing to come home to the United States on annual leave when he was abducted by the U.S. military and held without justification while his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or even whether he was still alive.


The government says he was suspected of helping pass classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces get into Iraq. But he was never charged with a crime, and he says he never broke the law and was risking his life to help his country.


Court papers filed on his behalf say he was repeatedly abused while being held at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility near the Baghdad airport dedicated to holding "high-value" detainees, then suddenly released without explanation in August 2006.


Two years later, he filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington arguing that Rumsfeld personally approved torturous interrogation techniques on a case-by-case basis and controlled his detention without access to courts in violation of his constitutional rights.

Donald Rumsfeld Fires Back At Bob Woodward Over Book Review

USNews.com:

In what’s turning into an epic battle between two of Washington’s major players and authors, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office today issued a pointed slap-down of Washington Post editor and author Bob Woodward’s point-by-point criticism of Rumsfeld’s book, Known and Unknown, which he dubbed “one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others.”


In a new posting today on Facebook, Keith Urbahn, Rumsfeld’s chief of staff, dismissed Woodward’s charges and raised old questions about how Woodward, when working on a prior book, was able to talk to former CIA Director Bill Casey when he was reported to be nearly comatose at the time. The issue has dogged Woodward, dubbed by his foes like Rush Limbaugh as “Mortuary Bob.”


In the posting, Urbahn slapped the journalist’s style of reporting and suggested that Woodward’s Foreign Policy review was payback for Rumsfeld refusing to cooperate with past Woodward book projects. “The well known story about Bob Woodward is that he practices what is derided as ‘access journalism,’ whereby he favors those who provide him with information and gossip and leak against their colleagues. Those who refuse to play along, such as Donald Rumsfeld, then pay the price,” wrote the Rumsfeld aide. [See photos of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.]


Woodward’s review was harsh, picking passages of Rumsfeld’s book to challenge and criticize. An editor’s note to the review says, “Few people know the ins and outs of the Bush administration as well as the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, who is flat-out disgusted with the evasions and elisions in Donald Rumsfeld’s new book.” After that, Woodward begins with a passage of Rumsfeld’s book then adds, “Rumsfeld’s memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others--including President Bush--distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won’t wash.” [See editorial cartoons about the Afghanistan War.]


One thing’s for sure: The Woodward review and Rumsfeld retort reveals a very deep distrust and dislike between the two long-time Washington players.


Here’s Urbahn’s full Facebook posting:


Washington, D.C.—Bob Woodward is invested in what has been a one-sided narrative of events—one that is now being challenged by a firsthand perspective in Known and Unknown and thousands of supporting documents made available on www.rumsfeld.com.


Mr. Woodward has demonstrated a regrettable tendency to put his storyline ahead of the facts. There is most notoriously the supposed deathbed conversation he had with former CIA Director Bill Casey that implicated President Reagan in the Iran-Contra affair and just so conveniently provided the perfect scene for a book Woodward was writing on the CIA—even though Mr. Casey was reported to be nearly comatose at the time and witnesses, including Mr. Casey’s widow, denied Woodward’s account. Woodward has been repeatedly accused of ‘tilting the facts,’ ‘misleading remarks,’ ‘disingenuous statements,’ and placing ‘book sales above journalism.’

Donald Rumsfeld Refuses To Apologize To Soldiers’ Families While On The View

Mediaite.com:

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is proving he’s not afraid of anyone on his media tour, and after escaping some recent comedic and serious interviews virtually unscathed, he was now ready to enter the lion’s den known as The View. The most interesting moment came when Barbara Walters may have caught Rumsfeld a little off-guard, as she twice asked Rumsfeld if he wanted to apologize to the families of soldiers who died during the Iraq war.


Yet Rumsfeld did not think an apology was appropriate, instead repeating his belief that no soldier died in vain. In a more humorous exchange, conservative co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck suggested that “the First Lady may have had a stronger stance on trans fats than Obama did on Gaddafi,” but the media savvy Rumsfeld, possibly knowing his audience, did not take the bait to bash Obama and surprisingly ended up agreeing with liberal co-host Joy Behar (to much audience amusement) in defending Obama’s efforts at private diplomacy.

Politiks As Usual: In The News 2/21/11

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George Soros: Rupert Murdoch and FOX Are Like Nazis

Rep. Michele Bachmann: "I Am Not The Queen of the Tea Party"

Mike Huckabee Infuriated By Christian Church Allowing Muslims To Pray There

Gadhafi's Son Warns of Civil War, Vows Dialogue With Opposition

Pat Boone: Christians Must Mobilize Now To Defeat Obama In 2012

Politiks As Usual: In The News 2/14/11

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George Soros, Nazi Obsessive

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Donald Rumsfeld Opens Up About Mistakes In Iraq

Donald Rumsfeld Says Obama Is Lying About Afghanistan

Newsmax.com:

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has vehemently denied President Obama’s claim that the Bush administration ignored the military’s repeated requests for more troops in Afghanistan.

“Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as secretary of defense, deserves a response,” Rumsfeld said in a statement on Wednesday.

In his speech Tuesday night, Obama asserted that the war in Iraq drew needed resources away from Afghanistan, which allowed the situation there to deteriorate after 2003.

"Throughout this period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what they were in Iraq," Obama said. "Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive."

Rumsfeld countered: "I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public.

“The President's assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.

“In the interest of better understanding the President's announcement last night, I suggest that the Congress review the President’s assertion in the forthcoming debate and determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied.”

Good for Rumsfeld. If Barry thinks that the Bush administration really didn't do enough with Afghanistan he should prove it, instead of relying on smears and hearsay from his idiot, liberal base. Then too maybe Barry still hasn't gotten the memo that Americans have long grown tired of him blaming everything on President Bush. Barry wanted the job, nobody forced him to run for President and now almost a year in and he's still looking behind him for excuses. Now how pathetic is that?

Politiks As Usual: In The News 6/22/09

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Donald Rumsfeld Attacked By Code Pink Psychos

As if you needed further proof that they're insane.