Pigs of War: Donald Rumsfeld - Human Rights Groups File Torture Suit against Rumsfeld

It certainly looks like Rumsfeld will have a hard time traveling to Europe in the years to come. There have already been war-crimes cases filed against Rumsfeld in Germany (one was dismissed, one is being appealed), in Argentina, Spain and Sweden. Today France and the US have been added to the list:

French, German and US human rights groups have filed a lawsuit in France accusing former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld of torture during the "war on terror."

The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), the French League for Human Rights (LDH), the US Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Germany's European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed the joint suit before a Paris prosecutor on Thursday.

With the increasing amount of evidence on Rumsfeld's torture practices, these human rights groups actually have a strong case:

In a statement posted on the FIDH website, the groups say that during his time as defense secretary, Rumsfeld authorized interrogation techniques that led to rights abuses in US-run detention centers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, as well as elsewhere.

The rights groups notably cite three memorandums signed by Rumsfeld between October 2002 and April 2003 "legitimizing the use of torture" including the "hooding" of detainees, sleep deprivation and the use of dogs.The group also has testimony from Janis Karpinski -- the one-time commander of US military prisons in Iraq -- to bolster its claims. more

- Deutsche Welle: Human Rights Groups File Torture Suit against Rumsfeld
- Democracy Now!: On Visit to France, Donald Rumsfeld Hit with Lawsuit for Ordering, Authorizing Torture
- New York Times: Torture Complaint Filed against Rumsfeld
- Wikipedia: Donald Rumsfeld

Understanding How Good People Turn Evil: The Lucifer Effect

In 1971, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo created the Stanford Prison Experiment in which 24 college students were randomly assigned the roles of prison guards and prisoners at a makeshift jail on campus.



The experiment was scheduled to run for two weeks. By Day Two, the guards were going far beyond just keeping the prisoners behind bars. In scenes eerily similar to Abu Ghraib, prisoners were stripped naked, bags put on their heads and sexually humiliated. The two-week experiment had to be canceled after just six days. Zimbardo tells the full story of the landmark study in his new book, "The Lucifer Effect." (Democracy Now! (video - real player) - Recommended! | Read the rush transcript)

Lucifer Effect website; putting the torture architects on trial
On the new Lucifer Effect website you are given the freedom to judge four US leaders who approved of the policies on which the abuse and torture [in the current "war on terror"] are based: George Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush. The charges for each leader are taken from public documents and analyses by Human Rights Watch. Vote here.


- See last Friday's broadcast of Philip Zimbardo on Democracy Now! (video - real player) - Recommended! | Read the rush transcript
- The Lucifer Effect website,
- Lucifer Effect Voting Booth
- The Stanford Prison Experiment on Wikipedia