‘Although intending to signal a new direction in Iraq with his nomination of Gates to replace Rumsfeld, Bush has no intention of leaving Iraq. He is building huge permanent U.S. military bases there. Gates at the helm of the Defense Department, Bush said, "can help make the necessary adjustments in our approach." Bush hopes he can bring congressional Democrats on board by convincing them he will simply fight a smarter war.

But this war can never get smarter. Nearly 3,000 American soldiers and more than 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died and tens of thousands have been wounded. Our national debt has skyrocketed with the billions Bush has pumped into the war. Now that there is a new day in Congress, there must be a new push to end the war. That means a demand that Congress cut off its funds.

And the war criminals must be brought to justice - beginning with Donald Rumsfeld. On November 14, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and other organizations will ask the German federal prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation into the war crimes of Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials. Although Bush has immunized his team from prosecution in the International Criminal Court, they could be tried in any country under the well-established principle of universal jurisdiction.

Donald Rumsfeld may be out of sight, but he will not be out of mind. The chickens have come home to roost.’

Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case

‘Like others who have since come to be regarded as dangerous criminals, Saddam Hussein was at one time backed and promoted by the U.S. As long as men like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar served U.S. geopolitical interests, their brutal methods were regarded as effective tools in the struggle to further U.S. objectives. It was only when their actions began to threaten those interests that these men earned opprobrium. A closer look at the history of their relationship with the U.S. reveals much about how foreign policy is conducted.

In his early years, Saddam Hussein was on the CIA payroll. Contacts began in 1959, when the agency sponsored him as a member of a small team assigned to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim. The Prime Minister had made himself a target by committing the unpardonable sin of taking his nation out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact. Hussein was set up in an apartment across the street from Qasim's office and told to observe his movements. But CIA plans received a setback when the attempted assassination on October 7, 1959 was conducted in so inept a manner that it failed to achieve its objective. An over-anxious Hussein fired too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding the Prime Minster.

Following the botched attempt on the Prime Minister's life, CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents helped Hussein to escape to Tikrit. From there he crossed into Syria and then to Beirut, where the CIA provided him with an apartment and put him through a short training course. Even at that young age, a former U.S. intelligence official recalls, Hussein "was known as having no class. He was a thug ­ a cutthroat." But he did have excellent anticommunist credentials. From Beirut he was eventually sent to Cairo, where he remained under the watchful eye of his CIA handlers and made frequent visits to the U.S. embassy to meet with agency officials. U.S. hostility towards Qasim had not abated, and he was eventually killed in a Ba'ath Party coup in 1963, after which the CIA gave the Iraqi National Guard lists of communists they wanted to see imprisoned and executed. According to former U.S. intelligence officials, many suspected communists were killed under the personal supervision of Hussein. 

As one former U.S. State Department official put it, "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have got to be kidding. This was serious business." With his image burnished through such accomplishments, Hussein first went on to become head of Iraqi security and then in 1979, president of the nation. He remained allied with the U.S. during his first decade in power as he ordered the arrest of communists and other political opponents by the thousands. Nearly all would be tortured or killed. (1)

’The Trial Of Saddam Hussein: Who Will Pass Judgement On Those Who Judge?