Bush and Rumsfeld "Knew About Abu Ghraib"

Maj-Gen Taguba insisted that at the very least Mr Rumsfeld “was in denial” at a congressional hearing in May 2004, when he said he had only become aware of the extent of the abuse – and seen some of the shocking photographic evidence – one day before. The Secretary told members of Congress that the images published in the media were “not yet in the Pentagon.”

Maj-Gen Taguba said that other material not yet publicly disclosed or mentioned in subsequent trials includes a video showing “a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee”. The first wave of images he received also included images of sexual humiliation between a father and his son.

On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found…

Posted by Dilated_Rebel
Born and raised very humbly in a “small town” in southern California, I was a product of different worlds. Literally, part of my family descends from Mexico the rest from Portugal and Uruguay. This mixture had kept me from supporting any racist psyche found...

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