Donald Rumsfeld: Wordsmith and War Criminal?

There is something about Donald Rumsfeld that I find truly scary. He doesn’t just answer questions, he tends to do soliloquies on them. He can even sound poetic about the most somber of topics which is duly noted in Slate Magazine
titled The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld : Recent works by the Secretary of Defense which you can read at
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:K6N0WbXOXUoJ:slate.msn.com/id/2081042/
+rumsfeld%27s++poetry+slate&hl=en.

At Rumsfeld's most recent news conference (June 1, 2005) , he spent most of the time criticizing and responding to the assertions made by Amnesty International, a highly respected human rights organization, which purportedly compared Guantanamo Bay’s Military Prison to a Gulag which Rumsfeld easily sliced and diced to pieces since it really is not an apt comparison given the gulags affected millions of people and Guantanamo holds not more than 500 + prisoners at any one time. He also talked about how American soldiers are good people who have brought freedom to millions of people around the world implying a few bad apples don't add up to anything tantamount to evil, my words not his.

Rumsfeld easily uses clever wordplay to avoid dealing with essentially problematic situations like the fact he agreed to enforce the new policy within the Bush administration that lifted the rules of the Geneva Convention from application to prisoners captured in Afghanistan or Iraq and considered to be part of Al Quaida’s terrorist network, although it
has recently come to light that some of mostly Arab detainees may have actually been bought and sold by ethnic groups and Pakistanis who received rewards the Dept. of Defense advertised for information or better yet the direct handing over of individuals labeled to be “terrorists” or potential “terrorists” who have been kidnapped for the money and not because they are even suspected of having done anything at all.

Obviously these prisoners are supposed to be interrogated by US military and screened but by the time this all happens what have these individuals been put through and how many ever really are released? There is also the issue of turning suspects over to be imprisoned in countries that approve of extreme torture tactics for the very purpose mentioned here torture. Whatever the truth is on this score, Rumsfeld has not exercised much interest in protecting anyone basic human rights. He is too busy defending his sloppy procedures and practices. There is also the sad cases of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison and also abuse conducted in other U.S. military run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan that almost cost Rumsfeld his job. But as we know Bush let him lay low for a while and now he is back talking his way through every minefield he meets never mincing his words and without conscience.

It is amazing to me that the media and particularly the reporters who interview Rumsfeld seem to buy into his wordplay and games. It is true the reporters do often ask questions which bring up problems but they are rarely voiced with any real urgency or deep concern.and there is little follow up to his answers. The next reporter just goes to something else, another topic. There seems to be the expectation that any question thrown Rumsfeld will be explained and sometimes it even appears the reporters are waiting for Rumsfeld to entertain them with some of his quixotic even more inane responses. Rumsfeld soliloquies will go down in history as the word rantings of a war criminal and I hope used in classes to show students how easily intelligent people who know how to use words can fend off the worst kind of accusations and criticisms, even war crimes.