La Cosa Nostra

MG (retd.) Taguba

Major General Stanley:

I am the very model of a modern Major General,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;

I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

All:

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
He is the very model of a modern Major General.

--Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert and Sullivan

___________

Major General Taguba, who led the investigation in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, was the model Major General. But he was blacklisted and forced to retired for his rigorous investigation and for allowing the "systemic and illegal abuse" to come to the light of public inspection.

The New Yorker's recent interview with Major General (retd.) Taguba presents a damning vision of the Army's project writ large ("The General's Report: How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its Victims.")

Ranger seldom gets to discuss real heroes in this era of illegitimate U.S. military and government actions. Today we'll give a gloss the actions of MG (retd.) Anthony Taguba, as presented by another hero in the press, Seymour Hersh.

Describing his first dismissive and mocking reception by Rumsfeld et. al., Taguba said now, three years on, "I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting."

At that meeting, someone asked for clarification on the finer point of whether the treatment was more correctly abuse, or torture. Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

"Taguba said that he saw 'a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.' The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it."

Further, Taguba said Rumsfeld's sworn denials of knowledge of the abuse had no credibility.

“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them.”

However, Taguba was limited in the scope of his investigations. He had to stay within the realm of the MP's at the prison who were actually on record as having committed the atrocities.

“From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups. . .These M.P. troops were not that creative,” he said. “Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.”

When Gen. Abazaid, head of Centcom, warned Taguba that he would be investigated, he said that was the first time in 32 years of Army service that he" thought [he] was in the Mafia.”

In the course of his investigations, he came to discover that Lt. Gen. Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, was also aware of the abuses. “Sanchez knew exactly what was going on,” Taguba said.

He also learned the Pentagon had ordered Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander at Guantánamo, to Iraq to survey the prison system there and to find ways to improve the flow of intelligence.

"The core of Miller’s recommendations, as summarized in the Taguba report, was that the military police at Abu Ghraib should become part of the interrogation process: they should work closely with interrogators and intelligence officers in “setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees.

"Taguba concluded that Miller’s approach was not consistent with Army doctrine, which gave military police the overriding mission of making sure that the prisons were secure and orderly. His report cited testimony that interrogators and other intelligence personnel were encouraging the abuse of detainees."

"If they had spoken, Taguba said, he would have reminded Miller that at Abu Ghraib, unlike at Guantánamo, very few prisoners were affiliated with any terrorist group. Taguba had seen classified documents revealing that there were only 'one or two' suspected Al Qaeda prisoners at Abu Ghraib."

Taguba's biggest beef was that the investigatory trail was never allowed to lead higher than the MP's stationed at Abu Ghraib, when it was obvious that the orders came from elsewhere.

“There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.”

Also, task force teams under Joint Special Operations Command task force teams were running amuck.

"A recently retired C.I.A. officer, who served more than fifteen years in the clandestine service, told [Hersh] 'It was surrealistic what these guys were doing.' “They were running around the world without clearing their operations with the ambassador or the chief of station.”

J.S.O.C.’s special status undermined military discipline.

Both Hersh and Taguba are the sort of Americans required if the U.S. is to win a war on terror. Morality and truth are the basis of effective action. Without these foundations, U.S. efforts are doomed to failure. The article ended on this poignant statement from Taguba:

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

Heartbreaking. Taguba's words echo my own, and should reflect those of any thinking American.