This one?
Meanwhile, some groups are planning to petition the American federal prosecutors to investigate Rumsfeld for war crimes. Rotsa ruck, but it’s good to know someone is making the effort.
How about zero $? It’ll get quashed somehow; perhaps when we threaten to cut off helium supplies for German zeppelins? That doesn’t mean it’s not happening now.
But it isn’t happening now. Some overly zealous German lawyer(s) is (are) trying to make a case, but that doesn’t mean it will be successful. And if you think it is, then I’m sure you also agree that Bill Clinton faced prosecution for war crimes, right? I mean, a real life lawyer tried to make that case, so it must be true. It’s on the internet and everything!
Of course the answer is no, niether Clinton nor Rumsfeld was or is facing proescution for war crimes. And that’s all I have to say on the subject. We now return this thread to it’s legitimate complaint against Bush.
BTW, “The Innocents of Gitmo” seems a very apt title for a Christmas-season thread. 
Neither is it defined only by its best ones, which is what far too many Americans seem to believe.
Still, i’m not sure that a nation shouldn’t, at least to some extent, be defined by its worst actions. Especially when it’s an ostensibly democratic nation, and those actions are carried out by elected representatives placed in power by the people themselves, and done in the name of the people and their freedom and security.
Also, the worst things are often done at a time when a nation’s values and ideals are under pressure. It seems to me that the true strength of those values and ideals rests in our ability to adhere to them when times are tough, not when times are easy.
Just out of curiosity, what would you say was the most “damn objectionable thing going on” in the 1990s? Are they comparable to what’s going on today?
Does inaction count? (Doing nothing in the case of multiple genocides?)
Well, the US is a democracy, and back in the 2004 elections, issues such as torture of prisoners and indefinite detention at Gitmo had been well-exposed by the media. Of course, there were other issues in that election, but in the end about 50% of the US electorate voted for an administration that stood for imprisonment without trial and loosening up the definition of torture. Not an entire country, perhaps, but at least half a country. (And much more than half if you throw in those eligible to vote who thought these things weren’t important enough).
Before November 2004, I could try to write it off as the actions of a rogue administration that didn’t really have a mandate for its more extreme actions; but after then, they really did have a mandate for the whole package. And that means that the whole country has to take responsibility for the mess.
The most objectionable thing I can think of that actually happened was Waco. There were a number of highly objectionable things attempted by the administration (many of which were filed back in the wish lists and trotted out to the new administration more sucessfully after 9/11).