Rumsfeld Shouldn't Resign, He Should be Thrown In Jail

Surely, any legal case against Rumsfeld would be strong. Let’s start with misappropriation of federal funds. As Bob Woodward details in his new book, “Plan of Attack,” Rumsfeld directed funds appropriated for Afghanistan to be used for the preparation of the Iraq invasion. He blithely ignored a requirement that Congress approve any such spending.

That’s against the law. Not a gray area. Not a maybe. It is a crime. Then there are Rumsfeld’s lies to Congress. Weapons of mass destruction, anyone? Rumsfeld’s mis-statements about Iraq’s potential to harm the U.S. can no longer be dismissed as mere “failures of intelligence,” as if the Defense Secretary might have decided differently on the matter had he received other advice. A special prosecutor will clearly document that Rumsfeld knew that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs and that he lied to Congress, repeatedly, in order to obtain the necessary legal mandate to go to war.

Lying to Congress is against the law. There are no legal-pyrotechnics required to make a case against Rumsfeld. His conviction would be a slam dunk.

Finally, of course, there are the cases of torture in U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The evidence is mounting that Rumsfeld knew about the shameful and destructive tactics used against Iraqis by the prison’s guards and did nothing to stop them. His evasive answers on the scandal (he insists he still can’t tell, for instance, whether the abuses were “an isolated instance” or not) suggests that an independent investigation may demonstrate that Rumsfeld created the conditions that led to the abuses of Iraqi prisoners. The Washington Post already has reached this very conclusion, opining on its editorial page that Rumsfeld “helped create a lawless regime in which prisoners in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been humiliated, beaten, tortured and murdered...”