| Crazytree |
White House denies prior knowledge of Abu Ghraib abuse
Posted Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:16pm AEST
The White House has insisted that President George W Bush first learned about abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison from media reports.
This is contrary to assertions by a former top general that Mr Bush likely knew about the scandal before it broke.
"The President said over three years ago that he first saw the pictures of the abuse on television," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said
Mr Stanzel was responding to questions about a New Yorker magazine report quoting the top military investigator of the Abu Ghraib scandal, retired Army Major General Antonio Taguba, as saying "the President had to be aware" of the abuse of prisoners by US military guards at the facility.
In the magazine interview, Maj Gen Taguba also said former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had initially denied knowledge of the lurid photographs of prisoner abuse, when he met him on May 6, 2004, two months after the scandal broke.
At best, Maj Gen Taguba said, "Rumsfeld was in denial ... The photographs were available to him - if he wanted to see them".
Referring to Mr Rumsfeld's May 7, 2004 testimony before US Congress in which he said he had no idea of the extent of the abuse, Maj Gen Taguba said Mr Rumsfeld was "trying acquit himself and a lot of people who are lying to protect themselves".
Rape video
The photographs taken by US jailers humiliating prisoners who were naked or hooded, on leashes or piled in a pyramid, rocked the world, becoming one of the few things Mr Bush has said he regretted about the Iraq war.
Maj Gen Taguba says he described to Mr Rumsfeld what he termed the "torture" of "a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum," the magazine reported.
The ex-general, who retired in January, spoke of other, undisclosed material on the Abu Ghraib abuse, including descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees.
He also told the magazine he saw "a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee," adding the video was never made public or mentioned in any court or in public.
Maj Gen Taguba says all high-level officials had avoided scrutiny while the jail keepers at Abu Ghraib were tried in courts-martial.
"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," Maj Gen Taguba told the New Yorker, adding his orders were to investigate the military police only and not their superiors.
"These (military police) troops were not that creative," he said. "Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority."
Criticism
Aware his remarks would open him to criticism from his military peers, Maj Gen Taguba said, "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."
Seymour Hersch, who interviewed Maj Gen Taguba for the New Yorker, told CNN television that officials tried to dissuade Maj Gen Taguba from disclosing the enormity of the scandal.
"He was discouraged, from the very beginning, to go all the way with the report. But he kept on doing it," Mr Hersh said.
"The question you have to ask about the President is this: No matter when he learned - and certainly he learned before it became public, and no matter how detailed it was - is there any evidence that the president of the United States said to Rumsfeld, 'What's going on there, Don? Let's get an investigation going'," Mr Hersh told CNN.
- AFP |
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| Fdubya247 |
I bet the "rectum violators" were all Muslim soldiers....right, Stumpy?
:rolleyes: |
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| otherone4life |
| May I provide the NCMoron/Vacate spin - Taguba doesn't know for sure that Bush knew about this earlier than reported. The situation was investigated, blah blah .... they are the ENEMY so it's ok to do what we did ...etc. |
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| otherone4life |
| Kinda funny how the two guys who have done more to expose the criminality in Iraq (Taguba) and Gitmo (Hamdan's JAG lawyer, name escapes me) were both pushed out of the military after exposing W's dirty laundry ..way to "support the troops"! |
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