Friday, May 29, 2009
Gen. Antonio taguba
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” says former U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, in reference to the thousands of detainee photos that President Barack Obama has refused to release. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Taguba, who led the investigation into abuses at Abu Ghraib in 2004, told of images showing an American soldier raping a female prisoner, a male translator raping a teenaged male detainee, and a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts, as well as sexual assaults on prisoners involving truncheons, wires and phosphorescent tubes.
The account attributed to Taguba, who retired from the military in 2007, runs counter to President Obama’s insistence that the banned photos “are not particularly sensational” in comparison to the earlier images released from Abu Ghraib. But Taguba does agree with the president that the new photos should not be released.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs both denied the allegations, but despite many media headlines to the contrary, a careful reading of their words shows that neither actually denied the existence of such photos.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos 'Show Rape' (by Duncan Gardham and Paul Cruickshank, Daily Telegraph)
The Daily Telegraph’s Rape Photo Claim (by Michael Scherer, Time)
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