Taguba Report: Systemic Torture of Iraqi POWs For Months

After saying there was no proof of systemic torture, the general provided zero evidence to the contrary. I thought Amnesty International had been crying wolf before, but now I doubt the general since he did not even bother reading the internal report, much less an external investigation.

Maybe the general could be bothered to read the Washington Post...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61560-2004May2.html

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The photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib -- images that reached Iraqi newspapers on Sunday, following a three-day holiday -- have reinforced the long-held view here that the U.S. occupation is intent on humiliating the Iraqi people. The system has been rife with complaints for months, but now the testimony of former Iraqi prisoners claiming abuse at the hands of U.S. jailers has gained new credibility while further damaging the reputation of the U.S. occupation authority.

Interviews with former Iraqi prisoners and human-rights advocates present a picture of the U.S. prison system here as a vast wartime effort to extract information from the enemy rather than to punish criminals. Former prisoners say lengthy interrogation sessions, employing sleep depravation, severe isolation, fear, humiliation and physical duress, were regular features of their daily regimen and remain so for the estimated 2,500 to 7,000 people inside the jails.
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You're a better man than me, MacBeth. I gave up all hope for him quite some time ago.

 

Well what do you know? MacBeth wakes up this morning, fixes a cup of gourmet coffee, reads the NY Times, flips on Air America, turns on CNN, and once again he's an 'instant expert'. Today he has really gone a step further and proclaimed himself more in-the-know that the TOP GENERAL in the nation. His attack on my reading comprehension skills was one of the funniest, most ironic pieces of text which I have ever seen. It was laughable, as usual. Obviously MacBeth is feeling insecure and ashamed after this find, and he has resorted to personal insults in an effort to provide a smoke screen to his folly. I hate to say I told you so, MacBeth, but I did. Sop that egg off your face with some bread and call it breakfast, rookie.

MacBeth, given your overwhelming knowledge of the Iraq situation which you have diligently accumulated from second-hand sources, are you arrogant enough to proclaim your knowledge superior to the TOP GENERAL (i.e. above Taguba) who says the abuse is not widespread? I eagerly await your response, Mr. Expert.

 

This is one of the best lines ever posted in the D&D. I pat myself on the back.

 

I hope that's a misprint from NYT's side, but with them calling these POWs animals, you never know.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/international/middleeast/03ABUS.html?pagewanted=2

 

Don't hurt yourself! By the way, where were you during Happy Hour on Friday???????????

 

TJ the top general admits that he hadn't read the report.

Let's take a quiz who knows the most about the details of this subject?

A. A General who lead the investigations, and then put in the work necessary to write the report.

B. A General, who by his own admission, has not read the report on the torture of Iraqis, and hasn't updated himself on the conclusions of the investigation.

I ask you to take the quiz since you don't seem able to debate the facts of the case.

 

FranchiseBlade, who cares if he hasn't read this particular report? He reads reports every single day which are just as meaningful as this one report that the liberals are now touting. Your entire argument is based on the TOP GENERAL being uninformed. How ludicrous is that? Very.

 

TJ there are no reports more meaningful than the report completed by Taguba. That is the single most relevant report on the topic of torturing Iraq prisoners. So while other reports that the TOP GENERAL might read would be meaningful, and he may be well informed on most aspects of operations in Iraq, he is not the most informed man on torture, since he admits that he hasn't read the most meaningful report on the subject.

 

Your entire argument is based on the Taguba report being the 'most meaningful'. You simply do not know if it is or not, because you don't have access to all the reports. Please continue taking incomplete information and declaring 100% certainty. Pure folly.

 

TJ, are you saying the Army assigned more than one report on this, and are hiding the other more meaningful ones?

Name the other reports if this isn't the main one, please.

 

What I'm saying is that I am not arrogant enough to assume that I have 100% of the information available to the top general. In the abscence of this certainty, I will reserve judgment regarding the troops. You are clearly much more willing to take the leap of faith without 100% of the data and make definitive conclusions. I do not agree with this method of reasoning. I am always willing to side with our troops than to criticize or ridicule them. They are serving our nation bravely and because of this they have my support until proven otherwise. Funny how the liberals are so quick to turn on them...

 

it's telling that T_J hasn't come out and said that he is against violations of the Geneva Convention or against US soliders terrorizing POWs

 

This is way to serious a topic to play the TJ game. Though I enjoy playing the game at times, this thread is beyond that.

 

My point stands, as backed up by my posts above.

Under the influence of what?

 

Stuff from the NYTimes article linked by michecon...
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Appearing on three Sunday talk shows, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave conflicting answers when asked if the problems at Abu Ghraib were systemic throughout detention centers in Iraq.

At first, General Myers insisted that the instances of mistreatment were not widespread and were the actions of "just a handful" of soldiers who had unfairly tainted all American forces in Iraq. But when pressed, he acknowledged that he had not yet read a classified, 53-page Army report completed in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, first reported in the May 10 issue of The New Yorker, that chronicled the worst of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. General Myers left open the possibility the abuses could be broader, saying, "We don't know that yet."

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The Taguba report, as well as other documents seen Sunday by The New York Times, also reveal a much broader pattern of command failures than initially acknowledged by the Pentagon and the Bush administration in responding to outrage over the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.

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The Taguba report's sharpest criticism was for officers in charge of the military police and military intelligence units in the prison.

 

Hersh on Blitzer...
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GENERAL RICHARD MYERS, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: There was no, no, no evidence of systematic abuse in the system at all. We've paid a lot of attention, of course, in Guantanamo, as well. We review all the interrogation methods. Torture is not one of the methods that we're allowed to use and that we use. I mean, it's just not permitted by international law, and we don't use it.

BLITZER: And I just want to point out, General Myers said he has not read that report yet, it hasn't reached up to him yet in the chain of command.

HERSH: I certainly believe him, which as far as I'm concerned, more evidence of the kind of systematic breakdown we're talking about. But let me read you the kind of stuff he said that predated the photographing.

"Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoritic acid liquid on detainees, pouring cold water on naked detainees, beating detainees with broomhandle and a chair, threatening them with rape, sodomizing a detainee with chemical lights and perhaps a broomstick, sicking military dogs on detainees." I mean...

BLITZER: Very graphic, and it gets even worse because I read the excerpts that you included in your article.

But the bottom line, he says, General Myers, this was not -- there's no evidence of systematic abuse. This may have been a few soldiers simply going bad.

HERSH: Taguba says otherwise. He says this is across the board. And what he says that's very important, is that these are jails, by the way, when we talk about prisoners, these are full of civilians. These are people picked up at random checkpoints and random going into houses. And even in the Taguba report, he mentions that upwards of 60 percent or more have nothing to do with anything.

So they're people just there. There's no processing. It's sort of a complete failure of anything the Geneva Convention calls for. And what can I tell you?
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BLITZER: Who was really in charge? Who's responsible here?

HERSH: Well, obviously, the highest command in Iraq. Because, as of last summer, they knew there was a problem in the prison.

BLITZER: When you say highest command you mean General Abizaid, General Sanchez?

HERSH: General Sanchez, Ricardo Sanchez. I think he's -- that's where you have to immediately go. This is going to end up there.

BLITZER: But you don't have any evidence he specifically knew what was happening in Abu Ghraib, do you?

HERSH: What I do have evidence of is that there were three investigations, each by a major general of the Army, ordered beginning in the fall of -- last fall. Clearly somebody at a higher level understood there were generic problems.

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HERSH: [General Taguba said] he believes that the private contractors and the civilians, the CIA, paramilitary people, and the military drove the actions of that prison.

In other words, what we saw -- look, a bunch of kids from -- they're reservists from West Virginia, Virginia, rural kids -- the one thing you can do to an Arab man to shame him -- you know, we thrive on guilt in this society, but in that world, the Islamic world, it's shame -- have a naked Arab walking in front of men, walking in front of other men is shameful, having simulated homosexual sex acts is shameful. It's all done to break down somebody before interrogation.

Do you think those kids thought this up? It's inconceivable. The intelligence people had this done.

BLITZER: So, what you're suggesting is that the six soldiers who have now been indicted, if you will -- and they're facing potentially a court martial -- they were told to go ahead and humiliate these prisoners? And several of these soldiers were women, not just men.

HERSH: In one photograph, you see 18 other pairs of legs, just cropped off. There were a lot of other people involved, watching this and filming this. There were other cameras going. There were videotapes too.

And this -- I'm sure that, you know, in this generation these kids have CD-ROMs all over the place. We'll see more eventually.

I'm not only suggesting, I'm telling you as a fact that these kids -- I'm not excusing them, it was horrible what they did, and took photographs, and the leering and the thumbs-up stuff, but the idea did not come from them.

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BLITZER: Was it useful, though, this kind of -- if there was torture or abuse, these atrocities, did it get information vital to the overall military objective in Iraq, based on what you found out?

HERSH: Nobody said that, and of course I assume you will hear that. But let me tell you, I talked to some people. I've been around this business in the criminal investigations, My Lai and all that, for years. I talked to some senior people, one guy who spent 36 years as an Army investigator, and he said, what happens when you coerce -- it's against the law, the Geneva Convention, to coerce information -- what happens is, people tell you what they think you want to hear.

So you've got a bunch of people, you don't know whether they know the insurgency or know al Qaeda, but they give you names, their brothers-in-laws, their neighbors. You then send out your people to arrest those people, bring them in, more people that may have nothing to do with anything. You break them down, then -- whatever means, interrogate them and get more names. It's a never-ending circle that's useless.

I would guess that the amount of information we have was minimal, out of this group, because they were largely people, as I say, picked up at random.

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BLITZER: As far as you know, no one was killed at Abu Ghraib, is that what you're saying?

HERSH: No, that's not true. There were people killed, yes, but not by the soldiers, not by the reservists. There were people killed -- I can tell you specifically about one case. One of the horrible photos is a man packed in ice. You want to hear it? I'll tell it to you.

They killed him -- either civilians, the private guards, or the CIA or the military killed him during an interrogation. They were worried about it. They packed him in ice. They killed him in evening. They packed him in ice for 24 hours, put him in a body bag, and eventually at a certain time -- don't forget, now, the prison has a lot of other Army units about it, and they didn't want to be seen with a dead body.

So they packed him in ice until it was the appropriate time. They put him on a trolley, like a hospital gurney, and they put a fake IV into him, and they walked out as if he was getting an IV. Walked him out, got him in an ambulance, drove him off, dumped the body somewhere.

That literally happened. That's one of the things I know about I haven't written about, but I'm telling you, that's where you're at. There was bloodshed on the other side of the...

BLITZER: We heard from Dan Senor earlier in this program, suggesting he said he didn't know of anyone who died at Abu Ghraib prison.

HERSH: I have some photographs I'll be glad to share with him anytime he wants to know.