The Obfuscation Report

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Stephen Cambone, War Criminals

In a New Yorker article today, Seymour Hersh interviews Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Pentagon’s investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib. This article is the first time that Taguba has publicly spoken out about the scandal, revealing that the Pentagon forced him to retire early because of his aggressive pursuit of the issue.

Taguba also reveals that he believed high-level military officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, knew about the abuses but feigned ignorance, putting all the blame on low-level soldiers. Key highlights:

Taguba was threatened by Gen. John Abizaid:

A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. … Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.“

White House “didn’t think the photographs were that bad”:

The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who “didn’t think the photographs were that bad” — in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, “Guys on the inside ask me, ‘What’s the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?’” A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.’”

Taguba was demoted and eventually forced to retire because of his investigation:

Taguba had been scheduled to rotate to the Third Army’s headquarters, at Fort McPherson, Georgia, in June of 2004. He was instead ordered back to the Pentagon, to work in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs. “It was a lateral assignment,” Taguba said, with a smile and a shrug. … A retired four-star Army general later told Taguba that he had been sent to the job in the Pentagon so that he could “be watched.” Taguba realized that his career was at a dead end. …

In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, “He offered no reason.”

Pentagon pressured Sen. John Warner (R-VA) “to back off” the investigation:

A former high-level Defense Department official said that, when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Senator John Warner, then the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was warned “to back off” on the investigation, because “it would spill over to more important things.” A spokesman for Warner acknowledged that there had been pressure on the Senator, but said that Warner had stood up to it — insisting on putting Rumsfeld under oath for his May 7th testimony, for example, to the Secretary’s great displeasure.

U.S. commander in Iraq “knew exactly what was going on”:

Taguba came to believe that Lieutenant General Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, and some of the generals assigned to the military headquarters in Baghdad had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib even before Joseph Darby came forward with the CD. Taguba was aware that in the fall of 2003 — when much of the abuse took place — Sanchez routinely visited the prison, and witnessed at least one interrogation. According to Taguba, “Sanchez knew exactly what was going on.”

Rumsfeld’s claims of ignorance about the abuse were “simply not true”:

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7th, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse. “It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn’t say, ‘Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something,’” Rumsfeld told the congressmen. “I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.”

Rumsfeld told the legislators that, when stories about the Taguba report appeared, “it was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge.” As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, “I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them”; at the House hearing, he said, “I didn’t see them until last night at 7:30.” …

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him — if he wanted to see them,” Taguba said.

Labels: Abu Ghraib, Antonio M Taguba, Donald Rumsfeld

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

A U.S. House committee has scheduled hearings on the military's misleading statements that followed the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch in Iraq, congressional officials said Tuesday.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold the hearing April 24 as part of an investigation into whether misinformation was part of a strategy to mislead the public, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because a formal announcement was scheduled for later Tuesday.

The hearings come two weeks after the Pentagon released the findings of its own investigations into Tillman's death, and three years after he was killed.

The committee has been quietly investigating the Tillman case since that release and decided to add the Lynch case to the scope of its probe.

The Tillman family and some lawmakers said the previous probes were inadequate and did not sufficiently address the role of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in hiding the true circumstances of the former NFL player's death from his relatives for five weeks.

The Army maintained publicly during that time that he had been killed by enemy fire, when in fact his fellow Rangers shot him after a chaotic ambush and dozens of officers knew it.

Tillman's death received worldwide attention because he had walked away from a huge contract with the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Lynch, a 21-year-old former Army supply clerk, became one of the most visible faces of the war when she was rescued from an Iraqi hospital after being captured by Iraqi forces on April 1, 2003. Her convoy had been attacked after taking a wrong turn in the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah. Eleven American soldiers were killed and six, including Lynch, were captured.

Her videotaped rescue by special forces branded Lynch a hero at a time the U.S. war effort seemed bogged down.

It also stirred complaints of U.S. government media manipulation. Early reports, later disproved, had her suffering knife and bullet wounds while fighting off attackers until running out of ammunition.

The oversight committee's focus is on how the misinformation in both cases got its start, and why. It is investigating the sources and motivations behind the misinformation, and whether Bush administration officials should be held accountable, one official said.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/10/national/a095459D88.DTL

Labels: Donald Rumsfeld, Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, propaganda