"When a Western-backed leader abuses their power and turns against their own people, bringing them to account for their crimes is an uphill battle. In this fastpaced expose, Reed Brody, a former investigator with Human Rights Watch, describes how he and his international team of investigators and torture survivors did just that. Brody tells how he and his team unearthed evidence and witnesses, petitioned courts and skeptical governments, and lobbied public opinion to bring Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad to justice. Habré, whose violent ascent to power was engineered by the U.S. government, had for eight years jailed, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people in a desperately poor country he held captive to his cruel and uncompromising ambition. This story sounds the alarm about the tragic consequences of such a policy. Furthermore, the Habré case shows there is nothing inevitable about brutal tyrants going unpunished for their crimes, even when they have previously had powerful allies in the United States and Europe. With enough persistence, cunning, and imagination, survivors and their supporters can sometimes bring even the worst criminals to justice"--

The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld lays out the evidence that high–level officials of the Bush administration ordered, authorized, implemented, and permitted war crimes, in particular the crimes of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Using primary source documents ranging from Rumsfeld's "techniques chart" and Iraqi plaintiffs' statements to the testimony of whistleblowers and key pieces of reportage, the book sets forth evidence of a torture program that took place throughout the world: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, secret CIA prisons, and other places unknown. The accused are accorded a defense drawn from their memos and public statements. Readers are allowed to judge whether the Bush administration has engaged in torture and whom among the administration to hold responsible. Reminiscent of Christopher Hitchens's bestselling The Trial of Henry Kissinger, The Case Against Donald Rumsfeld constitutes one of the only attempts to hold high–ranking Bush administration officials criminally responsible for their actions.