June 18, 2008: Former Army Torture Investigator Says Bush Administration Committed ‘War Crimes’

Physicians for Human Rights logo. [Source: Newsguide (.us)]Retired Army Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the probe into prisoner torture and abuse at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison (see March 9, 2004), accuses the Bush administration of committing “war crimes,” and calls for Bush officials to be held accountable. Taguba’s remarks are part of a wide-ranging report on US torture by the human rights organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). The report, released today, finds that US personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, isolation, being hung from ceilings, and other practices. One prisoner was forced to drink urine. “After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote in the report. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” PHR calls the report the most complete medical and psychological examination of former detainees to date. The report focuses on statements from, and medical examinations of, 11 detainees held for long periods of time in various US-run prisons and facilities before being released without charges. The report, titled “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” concurs with an investigation of Guantanamo conducted by investigative reporters for McClatchy News. PHR president Leonard Rubenstein says there was a direct connection between the Pentagon’s authorizations of extreme interrogation methods and the abuses his organization documented. “The result was a horrific stew of pain, degradation, and… suffering,” he says. [Physicians for Human Rights, 6/2008; McClatchy News, 6/18/2008]