The General’s Report (Abu Ghraib, will the chickens coming home to roost?)

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeldâ€™s senior military assistant. Craddockâ€™s daughter had been a babysitter for Tagubaâ€™s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, â€œCraddock just said, very coldly, â€˜Wait here.â€™ â€ In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were â€œonly Iraqis.â€ Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

â€œHere . . . comes . . . that famous General Tagubaâ€”of the Taguba report!â€ Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeldâ€™s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, â€œI thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.â€

...I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Tagubaâ€™s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their â€œextremely sensitive nature.â€) Taguba said that he saw â€œa video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.â€ The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. â€œItâ€™s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing womenâ€™s panties,â€ Taguba said...

Rumsfeld told the legislators that, when stories about the Taguba report appeared, â€œit was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge.â€ As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, â€œI say no one in the Pentagon had seen themâ€; at the House hearing, he said, â€œI didnâ€™t see them until last night at 7:30.â€ Asked specifically when he had been made aware of the photographs, Rumsfeld said:

There were rumors of photographs in a criminal prosecution chain back sometime after January 13th . . . I donâ€™t remember precisely when, but sometime in that period of January, February, March. . . . The legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasnâ€™t proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didnâ€™t know, and you didnâ€™t know, and I didnâ€™t know.

â€œAnd, as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press, and there they are,â€ Rumsfeld said.

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeldâ€™s testimony was simply not true. â€œThe photographs were available to himâ€”if he wanted to see them,â€ Taguba said. Rumsfeldâ€™s lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps Cambone had the photographs and kept them from Rumsfeld because he was reluctant to give his notoriously difficult boss bad news. But Taguba also recalled thinking, â€œRumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. Thereâ€™s no way heâ€™s suffering from C.R.S.â€”Canâ€™t Remember Shit. Heâ€™s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.â€ It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials...

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 Joseph Darby came forward with the CD. Taguba was aware that in the fall of 2003â€”when much of the abuse took placeâ€”Sanchez routinely visited the prison, and witnessed at least one interrogation. According to Taguba, â€œSanchez knew exactly what was going on.â€

...Later that month, Rumsfeld appeared before a closed hearing of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which votes on the funds for all secret operations in the military. Representative David Obey, of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat at the hearing, told me that he had been angry when a fellow subcommittee member â€œmade the comment that â€˜Abu Ghraib was the price of defending democracy.â€™ I said that wasnâ€™t the way I saw it, and that I didnâ€™t want to see some corporal made into a scapegoat. This could not have happened without people in the upper echelon of the Administration giving signals. I just didnâ€™t see how this was not systemic.â€

...The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who â€œdidnâ€™t think the photographs were that badâ€â€”in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, â€œGuys on the inside ask me, â€˜Whatâ€™s the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?â€™ â€ A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the â€œbasic strategy was â€˜prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.â€™ â€
A recently retired C.I.A. officer, who served more than fifteen years in the clandestine service, told me that the task-force teams â€œhad full authority to whackâ€”to go in and conduct â€˜executive action,â€™ â€ the phrase for political assassination. â€œIt was surrealistic what these guys were doing,â€ the retired operative added. â€œThey were running around the world without clearing their operations with the ambassador or the chief of station.â€

A recently retired high-level C.I.A. official, who served during this period and was involved in the drafting of findings, described to me the bitter disagreements between the White House and the agency over the issue. â€œThe problem is what constituted approval,â€ the retired C.I.A. official said. â€œMy people fought about this all the time. Why should we put our people on the firing line somewhere down the road? If you want me to kill Joe Smith, just tell me to kill Joe Smith. If I was the Vice-President or the President, Iâ€™d say, â€˜This guy Smith is a bad guy and itâ€™s in the interest of the United States for this guy to be killed.â€™ They donâ€™t say that. Instead, Georgeâ€â€”George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A. until mid-2004â€”â€œgoes to the White House and is told, â€˜You guys are professionals. You know how important it is. We know youâ€™ll get the intelligence.â€™ George would come back and say to us, â€˜Do what you gotta do.â€™ â€

...In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Armyâ€™s Vice-Chief of Staff. â€œThis is your Vice,â€ he told Taguba. â€œI need you to retire by January of 2007.â€ No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, â€œHe offered no reason.â€ (A spokesperson for Cody said, â€œConversations regarding general officer management are considered private personnel discussions. General Cody has great respect for Major General Taguba as an officer, leader, and American patriot.â€)

â€œThey always shoot the messenger,â€ Taguba told me. â€œTo be accused of being overzealous and disloyalâ€”that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.â€

Taguba went on, â€œThere was no doubt in my mind that this stuffâ€â€”the explicit imagesâ€”â€œwas gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.â€ He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

â€œFrom the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,â€ Taguba said. â€œAnd yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.â€
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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh

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The General’s Report (Abu Ghraib, will the chickens coming home to roost?)

Briant Peon

gworld Prominent Member

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The General’s Report (Abu Ghraib, will the chickens coming home to roost?)

Briant Peon

gworld Prominent Member

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