When it comes to credibility on the Abu Ghraib scandal, we can’t do much better than Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the two-star Army general who led the first investigation into detainee abuse. As for what Taguba found during his investigation, the general believes senior Pentagon officials were, their denials notwithstanding, involved in directing the abusive interrogation policies.
Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba said that he felt mocked and shunned by top Pentagon officials, including then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, after filing an exhaustive report on the now-notorious Abu Ghraib abuse that sparked international outrage and led to an overhaul of the U.S. interrogation and detention policies. Taguba’s report examining the 800th Military Police Brigade put in plain terms what had been documented in shocking photographs.
In interviews with New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh, Taguba said that he was ordered to limit his investigation to low-ranking soldiers who were photographed with the detainees and the soldiers’ unit, but that it was always his sense that the abuse was ordered at higher levels. Taguba was quoted as saying that he thinks top commanders in Iraq had extensive knowledge of the aggressive interrogation techniques that mirrored those used on high-value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that the military police “were literally being exploited by the military interrogators.”
Taguba also said that Rumsfeld misled Congress when he testified in May 2004 about the abuse investigation, minimizing how much he knew about the incidents. Taguba said that he met with Rumsfeld and top aides the day before the testimony.
“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,” Taguba said, according to the article. “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.”
Hersh’s article is online. There’s quite a bit to digest, but it’s worth taking a moment to consider how unbelievably poorly the administration responded to its own abuse scandal. Taguba explains an environment in which top officials obstructed an investigation, lied to Congress, threatened investigators, and dismissed torture as insignificant.
ThinkProgress summarized some of the article’s major revelations.
Taguba was threatened by Gen. John Abizaid: “A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid…. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: ‘You and your report will be investigated.’ [Taguba told Hersh,] ‘I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.'”
White House “didn’t think the photographs were that bad”: “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 ‘didn’t think the photographs were that bad’ — in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, ‘Guys on the inside ask me, ‘What’s the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?” A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the ‘basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.'”
Taguba was demoted and eventually forced to retire because of his investigation: “A retired four-star Army general later told Taguba that he had been sent to the job in the Pentagon so that he could ‘be watched.’ Taguba realized that his career was at a dead end…. In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. ‘This is your Vice,’ he told Taguba. ‘I need you to retire by January of 2007.’ No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, ‘He offered no reason.'”
But perhaps the most damaging revelations involve just how much top military officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, knew about what was going on at Abu Ghraib.
Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him — if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said. Rumsfeld’s lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps [Stephen] 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, “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S. — Can’t Remember Shit. He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials. […]
“From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” Taguba told me. His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command. “These M.P. troops were not that creative,” he said. “Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.”
The mind reels. Honestly, the moral bankruptcy of these people is just astounding.