Amnesty International Calls for the Arrest of American 'War Criminals'

If there were any doubt about the political leanings of Amnesty International, they have been erased for good with their request that Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and a host of others be arrested by any and all foreign governments as war criminals. Forget for a minute that this is Bush, or that you have ever heard of the Iraq War; does Amnesty International determine who is a war criminal? Isn't that an awesome responsibility to hand an NGO?

Amnesty apologists will point to the organization's apparent disclaimer that they are only calling for an investigation, and arrest only if the investigation warrants prosecution. Bull - don't you buy it. The Amnesty officials don't even believe this; witness the following statements:

If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998. ..

Amnesty International's list of those who may be considered high-level torture architects includes Donald Rumsfeld, who approved a December 2002 memorandum that permitted such unlawful interrogation techniques as stress positions, prolonged isolation, stripping, and the use of dogs at Guantanamo Bay; William Haynes, the Defense Department General Counsel who wrote that memo, and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is cited in the memo as concurring with its recommendations.

Our list includes Major General Geoffrey Miller, Commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, whose subordinates used some of the approved torture techniques and who was sent to Iraq where he recommended that prison guards "soften up" detainees for interrogations; former CIA Director George Tenet, whose agency kept so-called "ghost detainees" off registration logs and hidden during visits by the Red Cross and whose operatives reportedly used such techniques as water-boarding, feigning suffocation, stress positions, and incommunicado detention.

And it includes Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete" in a January 2002 memo and who requested the memos that fueled the atrocities at Abu Ghraib; Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, former Commander of US Forces in Iraq, and Sanchez' deputy, Major General Walter Wojdakowsi, who failed to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations at Abu Ghraib, according to the military's Fay-Jones report, and Captain Carolyn Wood, who oversaw interrogation operations at Bagram Air Base and who permitted the use of dogs, stress positions and sensory deprivation.

No need for a trial, much less an investigation, we've already delivered the condemned (witness the statements I've put in bold type)!

This is truly a shameful disgrace, and it taints the credibility of Amnesty well past the breaking point. Astonishingly brazen, really (hat tip to the Instapundit)...

UPDATE 2:39 p.m. - Notice that Amnesty repeats the smear that Alberto Gonzales called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' and 'obselete', leading the reader to think Gonzales thinks we should scrap them entirely. Gonzales said no such thing - here are his EXACT words:

"...this new paradigm [the war against terrorism] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments'.

Now, I suppose you could make the argument that the 'renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners' leaves the path wide open to torture, but it is not as clear cut as Amnesty makes it out to be, and it certainly doesn't fit their incredibly broad statement "...Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete" in a January 2002 memo". More on this last point from Power Line...