Gen. Taguba Hasn't Seen the 44 Abu Ghraib Torture Photos Suppressed by Obama?

by Damozel | In other words, The Telegraph got it wrong and Taguba saw only the ones already released (Salon has published 279 photos from Abu Ghraib and those are disgusting and indecent.). See: Maj. Gen. Taguba: Abu Ghraib Photographs Censored by Obama Show Rape "and Every Indecency".

Does that mean that the 44 Obama is fighting the ACLU to keep suppressed are even worse?  I don't like to imagine how that can be, and specifically so because of the apparent lack of accountability.  If they are worse, is no one going to be made to answer?   

Alternatively, does all this just mean that Obama isn't aware of what's already in the public domain?  I don't get it. 

Mark Benjamin writes at Salon:

On Thursday an article in the Daily Telegraph reported that Taguba, the lead investigator into Abu Ghraib abuse, had seen images Obama wanted suppressed, and supported the president's decision to fight their release. The paper quoted Taguba as saying, "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."

But Taguba says he wasn't talking about the 44 photographs that are the subject of an ongoing ACLU lawsuit that Obama is fighting.

"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said -- but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.....

Taguba says the Telegraph story got one important fact right: He said he does support Obama's decision to fight the release of the images subject to the lawsuit, even though he has not seen those images. "No other photographs should be released," Taguba told Salon, because he worries additional images might threaten the safety of U.S. troops.

This whole issue is getting increasingly confused.  Are the photographs really that bad?  Or are they only as bad as the sickening and grotesque ones currently on view at Salon?  Or are some of them the same?  And if they really are worse, is no one going to be held accountable?

Thers:

I don't like this. If these 44 pictures are really no worse than what we've seen before, which are revolting enough, then why would releasing them be especially explosive?

And that leaves open the question of the really dangerous, sickening images. Where are those? Taguba says they exist, and he's seen them, and he's described them, in graphic detail. So, apparently, rape happened. Has anyone been prosecuted for rape, specifically?

There's just too much messing around here. I think it's gotten to the point where it's clear the "worst" images exist -- and one way or another, they're bound to appear, sooner or later.

The issue now is how they are going to appear. Will it be with full disclosure and a transparent commitment to accountability? Or a leak, a scandal, and an embarrassing attempt at a legalistic explanation for what's inevitably going to look like a coverup -- because, good intentions or not, that's what it will be?

Digby says:

The whole thing has always stunk to high heaven because the only people who are doing time for any of this are some lowly grunts when it's obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that much of this stuff was a result of Cheney ordering the gloves to be taken off and General Geoffrey Miller being called in to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib. Not that any of them will ever pay the price for that.

Memeorandum has more.

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Comments

[Nexpider]

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the 216 Responses to Censored Abu Ghraib photographs show rape of detainees.i was listening to some of thom hartmann's show a day or 2 after obama stated