Rumsfeld Knew His Guys Were Torturing People To Death, Which Is A Serious Crime

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/126904

Rumsfeld Knew His Guys Were Torturing People to Death, Which Is a Serious Crime
By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted February 13, 2009.

71% of Americans want to see Bush investigated, and it's about time Obama's team hightailed their way over to court to start doing it.

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71% of Americans are in favor of an investigation into the possible misuse of the Department of Justice by the Bush administration according to a Gallup poll released yesterday.

That's a pretty startling number, even for those of us who've been arguing for investigations for some time now. After all, Obama didn't get 71% of the vote, which means that a lot of folks who voted for McCain also want equal justice applied equally.

One reason for this surprisingly robust groundswell for investigations may be that each day, formerly secret Bush-era documents surface that truly shock the conscience.

Just yesterday the ACLU got it's hands on a truly smoking gun memo written for then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. This document informed Rumsfeld that those he'd tasked with beating information out of suspected terrorists had not just tortured them, but tortured some of them, to death. In other words, they murdered them.

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If Rumsfeld had been, say, some local police captain in charge of these guys, this document would make him – at very least – accessory-after-the-fact to murder. He not only conspired to keep this evidence secret, but did not report this as the crime it is, nor order the perpetrators arrested, charged and put on trial.

There's a legal name for this crime: “Misprison of a Felony.” Defined here as:

“The failure to perform a public duty...Misprision is a versatile word that can denote a number of offenses. It can refer to the improper performance of an official duty...The most familiar and popular use of the term misprision describes the failure to report a crime....The first Congress passed a misprision of felony statute in 1789. The statute holds, "Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony … conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States" is guilty of misprision of felony and can be punished with up to three years in prison.

Under the federal statute, the prosecution must prove the following elements to obtain a misprision of felony conviction:

(1)another person actually committed a felony;
(2)the defendant knew that the felony was committed;
(3)the defendant did not notify any law enforcement or judicial officer; and
(4)the defendant took affirmative steps to conceal the felony.”

As for Rumsfeld, this document, the crimes it describes, and the available evidence indicate that, were he charged for misprison of a felony, he would be found; guilty on each count.

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[JCMach1]

1. There is more than enough paper trail to convict Rummy...

The only question is how much higher can that trail bring down...