The Scum also Rises

U.S. lawyers file complaint over abuses in Abu Ghraib
Rumsfeld, others named in case taken to German court

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES

BERLIN -- A group of American civil rights attorneys filed a criminal complaint in German court yesterday against top U.S. authorities, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for acts of torture committed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The complaint also names former CIA Director George Tenet; the former commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez; and seven other military leaders.

Attorneys from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights said they filed the complaint because they were disappointed in U.S. investigations into the Abu Ghraib abuses and hoped the filing would prompt an investigation by German authorities.

Just how wrong have things gone in this country, when a foreign government is asked to look into the misdeeds of our own government? Ever since the attrocities at Abu Ghraib were revealed, the Bush administration ahs stone-walled or quashed any investigation into it.

But with the revelations of the DOJ memos approved by Alberto Gonzales and IRC reports of conditions at Guantanamo Bay being nothing short of torture, the moral bankruptcy of Dubbyuh's administration is being revealed. The attrocities at Abu Ghraib and the mistreatment and torture of detainees at Gitmo show a government dedicated, not to the ideals of "freedom loving people", but rather one dedicated to power at any cost...achievement of the ends by any means necessary...a callous disregard for human suffering. To win the "War on Terror", our government must live up to the ideals it so blatantly pays lip service to. Otherwise the war is lost, the terrorists will have won, not because of their moral or military superiority, but because of the weakness, the shortsightedness, the hypocrisy and utter moral bankruptcy of our elected leaders.