Antonio Taguba and his report, May 2004

Major General Antonio Taguba was given the task of investigating the Abu Ghraib scandal in May 2004. His priority was to focus his attention on the acts of the MP's only and to conduct a thorough and complete investigation into the torture and abuse scandal that took place in 2003.  

Taguba found clear evidence of the mistreatment of the detainees. Photographic and video evidence showed nude inmates in various humiliating positions and some even provided proof of rape and sodomizing detainees.

He discovered that the MP's were simply following orders that had been handed down from top brass officials including Major General Geoffery Miller who had come from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to obtain intelligence from the detainees.
During his investigation into the mistreatment and torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Major General Antonio Taguba gathered evidence pertaining to the involvement of military intelligence, contractors and other operatives involved with the intelligence gathering at the prison. He stated that it was their influence on the guards at Abu Ghraib that led to the torture or "softening up" of the inmates in custody.

These accusations made Taguba a very unpopular person with the Department of Defense and with Donald Rumsfeld in particular. Rumsfeld stated that he had no knowledge of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prior to Taguba's report being released.

Taguba Report

The Senate Armed Services Committee Report on Treating of Detainees in December 2008

In a report issued by Democrat Senator Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican Senator of Arizona John McCain, blame for the inhumane treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and other facilities falls on the Bush Administration and Donald Rumsfeld.


The Senate Armed Services Committee aimed their attention at the use of SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape) techniques that are commonly used on American soldiers to train for times of capture, against detainees in U.S. custody. These methods include nudity, stress positions, waterboarding, fear and others. The report published by Levin and McCain exposed the inquiry made by top Defense Department officials regarding the use of SERE techniques against prisoners of war.

The report rejects the ideas that the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were acting on their own, but instead were following orders that were approved by top military officers and Rumsfeld himself.

Much of the report is still considered classified and the information cannot be released, however what has been published clearly links the abuses at Abu Ghraib and GITMO to the Pentagon and Donald Rumsfeld approvals of such techniques.

Where are Lynndie England and Charles Graner now?

Lynndie England carries with her exreme emotional distress over the incident at Abu Ghraib. After being released from jail after serving a 3 year sentence, England how has a felony on her record and is unable to get a job. She now lives with her parents in a trailer park in West Virginia, along with her son Carter who is the biological child of Charles Graner. Graner and England conceived the child while stationed in Iraq. According to England, she does not regret her actions towards the prisoners, because of their extreme risk to society, only that she does regret that her photos could have been responsible for the murder of other Americans.

Charles Graner was said to be the ring leader of the Abu Ghraib scandal. He received a ten year prison sentence to be served in Leavenworth Kansas. Graner only served six and a half years total and was released early for good behavior in 2011. He remains under probation until his obligation to the military is complete in 2014. Graner lives with his wife, another member of the Abu Ghraib scandal, former PFC Megan Ambuhl.

How did the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal become known and what was the immediate result?

n an effort to gather photos showing famous landmarks in Iraq, 1st Specialist Joseph Darby asked Sgt. Graner if he had any photos. Graner gave Darby two disks full of photos, some of which completely shocked Darby. Knowing that the photos showed unethical behavior by military police officials, Darby handed the disks over to the authorities.


From there an investigation was in place within the Army to find out what was going on inside Abu Ghraib. In an effort to protect the MP's involved in the scandal, a safe box was desigined for the MP's to place any other incriminating photos in. Authorities in the white house labeled the situation “Animal house on the night shift” because of the actions of the prisoners and their treatment of the detainees. However it is the feeling of many that the MP’s were not acting on their own free will. Most were ordered to torture and humiliate the detainees using various means in an effort to obtain intelligence. Some of the techniques used had been used in other warfare, and could not have been known to the MP’s on their own. This information was coming from a higher source.

Outrage swept the nation as media outlets plastered the televisions and newspapers with the images from the Abu Ghraib scandal. 60 Minutes 2 aired a special that outed the MP's involved and forever changed their lives. The United States was no longer viewed as a country who placed high value on civil rights, but rather another animalistic nation.

What happened at Abu Ghraib?

Various forms of torture were performed at Abu Ghraib prison by military police officials and the investigators themselves.



 Detainees were usually abused usnaked wearing only sacks or hoods over their heads. In Arab culture this was a humiliating task as homosexuality and being naked in front of other men is condemned.



They were beaten, forced to stand in stress positions for hours at a time, held without food, water, blankets, bedding, toilets, and other basic amenities that are common in the jails in the U.S. Photographs discovered showed the guards enthusiastically mistreating the detainees.



The MP’s when questioned argued that their orders to harass and torture the prisoners of the “hard site” came from the interrogators themselves and even further up their chain of command. They thought that this new way of handling prisoners in a war time situation was the proper way since no one had informed them otherwise. The prison riot of 2003 only made the situation worse for the detainees. The guards became animalistic in nature when they felt that their safety was being compromised, they acted out by using brutality against the detainees. Mentally the guards were angry at the situation they were in and the easiest way to release their anger was to take out their aggression on those in captivity. Interrogators praised the guards for their work inside the prison, stating that they were receiving quality information from the detainees and that their methods were actually working. To the guards, this was their confirmation that they were doing their job properly regardless of what their morality was telling them.

Military Police Moved from Incarceration Staff and Placed Under Military Intelligence (MI)

Once General Miller took over intelligence investigations at Abu Ghraib, all hell broke loose. Brigadier General Janet Karpinski was relieved of her command and Military Intelligence was handed over to agencies such as the CIA and MI.

 

 These groups assigned the MP’s with the duty of softening up the prisoners prior to their investigations using a variety of techniques that would ensure that the detainees would have a “bad night”. The MP’s would play loud music, make noise by banging trash can lids together and scream at them to keep them awake.

 

 Female MP Megan Ambuhl was ordered to give certain male detainees several showers a day and make her presence known to him to humiliate and shame them. This was the beginning of the torture at Abu Ghraib prison that would lead to one of the biggest scandals in U.S. military history.

Major General Geoffrey Miller, Donald Rumsfeld, Ricardo Sanchez and Interrogation Techniques

Major General Geoffrey Miller had been in charge of obtaining intelligence information from detainees who were held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His methods were extreme and bordered on torturous. In declassified statements from the FBI, some prisoners at Guantanamo were shackled to an object for 18 hours or longer without food or water and left to deficate or urinate on themselves.





Rumsfeld approved of these methods of enhanced sensory disorientation and stress positions such as nudity and humiliation. On the bottom of the memo in which he signed he asked the question "I stand for 8-10 hours a day, why is standing only limited to 4 hours?" This added statement was the silent nod of approval for harsher methods of interrogation. Rumsfeld, who was pleased at the ease in which information was coming from GITMO decided to send Miller to Abu Ghraib in an effort to gather intelligence that had been lacking from the detainees.

 Following Miller's arrival in Abu Ghraib, General Ricardo Sanchez who was in charge of operations in Iraq issued a memo on September, 2003 authorizing the use of extreme techniques that could potentially violate international law such as that written in the Geneva Conventions.  Unsure of exactly what their orders were in Iraq, the MP's in charge at Abu Ghraib never knew what was required of them and which methods violated a prisoners rights, for example the stripping naked of detainees and interrogating them in the nude. This left many of them feeling uncomfortable in their positions in the prison.

The "hard site" and the failure of "intelligence" at Abu Ghraib

High value detainees and high security prisoners were held in areas known as "hard sites". These were the worst terrorists in the country inluding but not limited to Iraqi insurgents, Taliban and al Qaeda operatives.


Women and children were also detained in the most secure areas of the prison.


As insurgency increased, military officials increased their patrols. They were informed to capture and turn over any and all Iraqi's in an effort to collect information. Out of all of the prisoners held at Abu Ghraib, between 70 and 80 percent of them had no knowledge of terrorists or the countries who harbored them. Intelligence officers were doing their job, but because of the high volume of innocent detainees, they simply were not collecting the type of information they were hoping to regarding weapons of mass destruction. This added to the massive amount of pressure officials in Washington were receiving regarding the war, and they were forced to make a bold move.

 In the summer of 2003, Donald Rumsfeld would go to any lenghts necessary to obtain the same type of information from Abu Ghraib in Iraq as he received from the detainees at Guantanmo Bay, Cuba.

Location, Atmosphere & Situation at Abu Ghraib by September 2003

Abu Ghraib was once the location of Saddam Hussein's largest torture chamber. During his time in power Saddam tortured and executed nearly 30 thousand people. Abu Ghraib was a dark and creepy place full of hate, sadness and death. Upon their arrival the 372nd Military Police Company were forced to deal with extremely hot temperatures exceeding 120 degrees combined with odors of death, feces and urine. This was the environment in which they would spend their time in Iraq.


Not only were the conditions inside the prisons difficult to tolerate, but the constant warfare and explosions outside of Abu Ghraib kept the guards on high alert.


The MP's of the 372nd company were in no position to guard prisoners at Abu Ghraib. They had no prior training to guard the detainees. By the end of September there were over 6,000 detainees with only 300 MP's to watch over them. At any given moment the detainees could have easily taken over the guards and the prison.

American Techniques of War & Iraqi Civilians

American troops in Iraq in 2003 were fighting a "different" kind of war. In previous altercations troops were trained to know their enemy. During WW2 nazi Germany and the Japanese responsible for the bombing on Pearl Harbor were definite enemies of the United States.

 In the summer of 2003, this was no longer the case. Insurgents often looked like regular civilians. Women and children were often used as decoys or suicide bombers to detonate around troops. Cars driving in front of or too close to military areas left military personnel on edge because too often they would be shot at by passers by. Their training was that there was no training. Troops were told if it looks like the enemy...shoot it. More times than not their hunches on who exactly the enemy is, was incorrect.



Hundreds, even thousands of Iraqi men, women and children were taken out of their homes and placed into prisons much like Abu Ghraib and interrogated for information regarding the insurgents, al Qaeda and the Taliban. Many times their interrogations only led military personnel back to square one.

The Justice Department and the UN Conventions against Torture

The definition of torture according to www.dictionary.com is as follows:

tor·ture

   /ˈtɔrtʃər/ Show Spelled [tawr-cher] Show IPA noun, verb, tor·tured, tor·tur·ing.

noun

1.

the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.

2.

a method of inflicting such pain.

3.

Often, tortures. the pain or suffering caused or undergone.

4.

extreme anguish of body or mind; agony.

5.

a cause of severe pain or anguish.

 

This would be the definition in question with regards to the Justice Department and how the U.S. military would interpret the ability interrogate detainees held at Abu Ghraib in an effort to obtain intelligence.

 

 

 

John Yoo and the Justice Department claim that the terms severe and pain are too loosely defined under the statutes in the UN Conventions. This was their argument in advocating the methods used at Abu Ghraib on detainees. In a memo to the White House, the pain inflicted on the detainees should be equivalent to that associated with organ failure or even death.

Critics were blown away at this information. Advocating this type of behavior was no different than the torture used on prisoners by Saddam Hussein under his evil regime.

 

The Geneva Conventions and the War on Terror

The United States has always tried to lead by example. It has been a representation of fairness, equality, and democracy around the world. This changed with the attack on September 11, 2001 and the war against terrorism fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When President George W. Bush made the decision in 2002 that the United States would not longer abide by the Geneva Conventions, the rules went by the wayside and anything was fair game in the art of war.

The Geneva Conventions was a binding international law that simply prohibits various forms of torture, humiliation, treatment that could be degrading to one's personal dignity and so forth. These standards were signed by the United States in 1949 as a protectorate for U.S. military men and women in the event of capture.

 Should they become prisoners of war, the U.S. troops would be treated fairly according to the document. The war in Afghanistan was very different than the previous wars fought by Americans. The enemy was a terrorist group who hadn't signed the Geneva Conventions and therefor according to the Justice Department, should not receive the special treatments under the law, and they didn't...

Context of the Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse Scandal

During the fall and summer of 2003, coalition forces in Iraq came under insurgency attack on a daily basis. Beginning with the Jordanian embassy bombing it became apparent the enemy would not stop until the job was complete. Roadside bombs and suicide bombers became the new weapon of choice for the insurgents. Oftentimes women and children were used as decoys to distract the troops long enough to wound and kill. The war in Iraq became an extremely bloody and costly one. In an effort to crack down on the cells that were creating the IED's and bombing tactics, military officials made it imperative that the troops capture and detain as many suspects as they could for investigational purposes. They were to be detained at various prisons around Iraq, the most controversial being Abu Ghraib prison which was previously used as one of Saddam Hussein's torture chambers. Massive amounts of detainees were being brought in daily. The final number at Abu Ghraib was near ten thousand people. Unhappy with the lack of information that was coming out of Abu Ghraib, officials in the Pentagon, primarily Donald Rumsfeld signed off on an order condoning harsher interrogation techniques like those that had been used at GITMO in the early stages of the war. These treatments were not to be in an excessive manner which could cause death to the inmates. This left a large gap in the way that the MP's, who were not technically trained in investigation, could interpret the document. This would be the groundwork for the scandal that surrounds the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.