Court asked to decide:

Was Rumsfeld a torturer?

March 26, 2010 Despite the repeated calls for an independent bipartisan investigation of those at the highest level of our government responsible for authorizing the torture policy that provided al-Qaida with an effective recruiting instrument, the stubborn fact now is the same as reported by Jane Mayer in "The Dark Side" (an indispensable book based on Dick Cheney’s forecast five days after 9/11 on how the U.S. war on terrorism would be waged).

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But in an unexpected and historic ruling on March 5 of this year, federal District Judge Wayne Andersen in Chicago allowed the continuance of a lawsuit — “Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel v. Donald Rumsfeld, United States of America and Unidentified Agents.” It is the first continuance of a torture case against a senior Bush official.

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The reason this case is the first against so high an American official to have survived so far is that the two plaintiffs are American citizens. In his 39-page March 5 ruling, Judge Andersen quoted from Justice Sandra O’Connor’s decision for the Supreme Court in the 2004 Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case: “We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of American citizens.”

This case against Donald Rumsfeld in Chicago should not be the end of the line for accountability up the chain of command, at any time, for war crimes, and not only those by Americans against Americans. -->-->-->