Maj. Gen. Taguba Accuses Bush Administration
of War Crimes
By Democracy Now!
Retired Major General Antonio Taguba, the Army general who
first investigated the abuse at Abu Ghraib, has accused the
Bush administration of committing war crimes. “The commander
in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime
of torture,” Taguba said.
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Retired General Antonio Taguba who led the
US army’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib abuses has
accused the Bush administration of “a systematic regime of
torture” and war crimes. Taguba’s accusations appear in the
preface to a new report released by Physicians for Human
Rights. The report uses medical evidence to confirm
first-hand accounts of eleven former prisoners who endured
torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo
Bay.
Taguba writes “there is no longer any doubt
as to whether the current administration has committed war
crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is
whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to
account.”
The report was published in the midst of two
days of Congressional hearings on Capitol Hill. On Tuesday,
the Senate Armed Services Committee held an 8-hour hearing
that exposed the role of top Bush administration officials
in authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques.
The committee released a series of previously classified
documents detailing how the Pentagon and the CIA transformed
the military’s SERE resistance training program into a
blueprint for interrogating terrorist suspects. Committee
Chair Senator Carl Levin explained the timeline of
implementing the SERE or Survival, Evasion, Resistance,
Escape techniques and the role of military psychologists in
devising these routines.
The Pentagon’s former general counsel
William Haynes was repeatedly questioned at Tuesda’s hearing
about his role in authorizing the interrogation techniques.
During two hours of testimony, Haynes responded to dozens of
questions by saying he could not recall or remember details
about the process of approving the interrogation techniques.
Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island blasted Haynes’
role in authorizing torture.
A major McClatchy newspaper series
investigating the detention of terrorist suspects names
Haynes as one of a group of five lawyers at the White House,
Pentagon, and Justice Department who called themselves the
“War Council” and reinterpreted US and international laws
about accountability and the treatment of prisoners. Other
members of the War Council include Vice President Cheney’s
former legal advisor and current chief of staff, David
Addington; former attorney general Alberto Gonzalez; former
Justice Department lawyer John Yoo; and former deputy to
Gonzalez Timothy Flanigan.
Despite the new revelations of systematic
prisoner abuse sanctioned at the highest level of
government, White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto insisted
Tuesday that the administration does not abuse detainees.
Today we spend the hour on torture. We begin
we Mark Benjamin, National Correspondent for Salon.com. He
covered the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on
Tuesday.
Mark Benjamin,
national correspondent for
Salon.com. His most recent article is
A Timeline to Bush Government Torture
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