> Former US general confirms high-level knowledge of Abu Ghraib torture
> By Joe Kay
> 19 June 2007
> Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
> Former US Major General Antonio Taguba, who headed the first
> military investigation into torture at Abu Ghraib prison in
> Baghdad, has now alleged that former Defense Secretary Donald
> Rumsfeld and other top officials were aware of abuse at the
> Iraqi prison months before it was made public in late April
> 2004. According to Taguba, the torture at Abu Ghraib arose from
> a policy promoted by Rumsfeld and the Bush administration.
> Taguba's statements, in an interview conducted by veteran
> journalist Seymour Hersh, appear in the June 25 issue of the New
> Yorker magazine. The interview is also available online.
> In the conversations with Hersh, Taguba also asserts that he was
> forced out of his position in the military because of his role
> in investigating torture in Iraq and his reluctance to lie to
> help cover up for the administration.
> Speaking of the Abu Ghraib abuse, Taguba remarked, "From what I
> know, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what
> they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups."
> According to Hersh in the New Yorker, "Taguba came to believe
> that Lieutenant General Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, and
> some of the generals assigned to the military headquarters in
> Baghdad had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu
> Ghraib" even before photographs of the torture fell into the
> hands of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division in January 2004.
> Taguba told Hersh that Sanchez regularly visited Abu Ghraib
> during the fall of 2003, during the time the documented torture
> was taking place, and that he personally witnessed at least one
> interrogation. "Sanchez knew exactly what was going on," Taguba
> said. This is a very serious accusation.
> These statements go beyond what was reported in his own initial
> investigation, which formed the basis for the first news stories
> about the Abu Ghraib scandal in the spring of 2004. That
> investigation was limited to examining the role of the military
> police at Abu Ghraib and not higher-level military officers and
> civilians. The military has carried out a number of separate
> investigations into torture in Iraq, but all have served to
> obscure the role of top officials and military personnel.
> It was Taguba's 2004 report that first documented links between
> Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, particularly through the person
> of Major General Geoffrey Miller. Rumsfeld and the former
> undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen Cambone,
> transferred Miller from his command at Guantánamo to Abu Ghraib
> in the fall of 2003. According to the Taguba report, one of the
> main purposes of Miller's visit was to get military police
> involved in "setting the conditions of successful exploitation
> of internees" by intelligence.
> Hersh also reports that one of Miller's tasks was to bring
> methods developed by the Pentagon's Special Access
> Programs—secret programs authorized without any congressional
> oversight—to Abu Ghraib. In other words, at a time when the US
> was facing growing resistance to its occupation of Iraq, Miller
> was tasked with introducing more "aggressive" interrogation
> techniques.When Taguba's report, along with a selection of
> photographs, was leaked, the Bush administration immediately
> moved to blame low-level soldiers. Leading administration
> officials, including Rumsfeld, also claimed they were unaware of
> the evidence and had not been told of the photographs at the
> center of Taguba's investigation. This was what Rumsfeld told
> congressional hearings in May 2004. However, according to the
> man who led the investigation, this was a lie.
> Taguba had been sending e-mails to top Pentagon officials for
> months, which evoked little response. Hersh writes, "Taguba said
> that senior officials in Rumsfeld's office had been briefed on
> the photos only a couple days after they were first given to the
> Army's Criminal Investigation Division, in January 2004."
> However, prior to the publication of the photographs—and the
> ensuing public outcry—no one in the Pentagon was particularly
> interested. Once the photographs were released to the media, the
> main focus of the administration was on containing the political
> fallout, and Rumsfeld concentrated in particular on trying to
> find out who had leaked the report.
> When Rumsfeld claimed in testimony before Congress May 7, 2004,
> to have no knowledge of the extensive abuse, "Taguba, watching
> the hearings, was appalled," Hersh writes. "He believed that
> Rumsfeld's testimony was simply not true."
> Hersh's article also associates George W. Bush with the attempt
> to conceal the scandal at Abu Ghraib. "Whether the President was
> told about Abu Ghraib in January (when e-mails informed the
> Pentagon of the seriousness of the abuses and of the existence
> of photographs) or in March (when Taguba filed his report), Bush
> made no known effort to forcefully address the treatment of
> prisoners before the scandal became public, or to reevaluate the
> training of military police and interrogators, or the practices
> of the task forces that he had authorized," Hersh writes.
> "Instead, Bush acquiesced in the prosecution of a few lower-
> level soldiers."
> Taguba implicates Rumsfeld as well in the abuse of prisoners at
> Guantánamo Bay—abuse that, unlike Abu Ghraib, has never been
> photographed. An investigation overseen by Lieutenant General
> Randall Schmidt in 2004-2005 found that Miller and Rumsfeld were
> behind the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani, who, according
> to Schmidt, was interrogated and abused 20 hours a day, for at
> least 54 days.
> As with Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld sought to distance himself from any
> traceable and direct involvement. "Rummy did what we called
> 'case law' policy—verbal and not in writing," Hersh quotes
> Taguba. "What he's really saying is that if this decision comes
> back to haunt me I'll deny it."
> Taguba was eventually pushed out of the Pentagon for raising
> uncomfortable questions and for refusing to obediently follow
> the story laid out by the Bush administration—that the torture
> at Abu Ghraib was the product of a few "bad apples," and that
> White House and Pentagon policy had nothing to do with it.
> In particular, he continued to insist, including during
> congressional testimony, that Miller played a critical role in
> getting military police at Abu Ghraib to abuse prisoners. But
> Miller had been sent by Cambone, under the direction of
> Rumsfeld. To point the finger at Cambone was to point the finger
> at Rumsfeld. To implicate Rumsfeld, however, raised the danger
> of the entire administration, including the president and vice
> president, falling under suspicion.
> Taguba's comments are further evidence that the torture
> photographed at Abu Ghraib—the sexual humiliation and abuse, the
> use of dogs to maul prisoners, the use of agonizing stress
> positions, the outright murder of prisoners—was not the product
> of a few individuals, but had its source much higher up,
> ultimately in the White House itself.
> The former general's comments underscore the fact that more than
> three years after the evidence first came out, those responsible
> for the crimes at Abu Ghraib have not been held accountable. For
> this, the Democratic Party, along with the American media,
> shares a large measure of blame.
> The question of torture at Abu Ghraib, a national scandal, was
> not made an issue during the elections of 2004 or 2006. When a
> series of new and even more brutal photographs and videos was
> finally released last year—after being suppressed by the media
> for two years—the matter was quickly dropped. Since the
> Democrats gained control of Congress in January, they have not
> sought to make the question of torture, and the White House's
> responsibility for it, a subject for investigation or subpoena.
> There is every reason to believe that similar forms of abuse
> continue today—in Guantánamo Bay, in Iraq and in secret prisons
> operated by the CIA internationally.
> In his article, citing a former senior intelligence officer and
> a government consultant, Hersh notes that "after the existence
> of secret CIA prisons in Europe was revealed, in the Washington
> Post, in late 2005, the Administration responded with a new
> detainee center in Mauritania." The Military Commissions Act,
> passed with bipartisan support in 2006, was designed to allow
> the CIA program to continue while shielding administration
> officials from future prosecution.
> The New Yorker article in its entirety can be found here.
> See Also:
> Military judges dismiss war crimes charges against Guantánamo
> prisoners[6 June 2007]
> The Abu Ghraib photos and the anti-Muslim "free speech" fraud
> [17 February 2006]
> Miller takes the Fifth
> US general withholds testimony in Abu Ghraib abuse trial
> [19 January 2006]
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