Do you know that a U.S. Army General has accused the Bush Administration of committing war crimes?

The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices. "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. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html This isn't just anybody, this is the Army General that investigated the abuses at the prisons in Iraq. Do any of you know that most of the people rounded up in Iraq and sent to the prisons before Petreaus became the commander were rounded up in mass, indiscriminate sweeps? Most were released without any charge after being held, tortured and humiliated? So, we should hang high innocent people who we do not charge with anything eh? Read "Fiasco" by Thomas E. Ricks Chow of course my avatar is hot. It's a pic of me. :) Sorry, you will have to practice sexual humiliation on someone else. You're not worthy. Once again, this is the Army General who investigated the abuses at the prison ON BEHALF OF THE U.S. ARMY. His point is that the people that used torture were given the green light to do so from the civilians in the Pentagon. He determined these things thru his investigation, obviously. He is in a position to know, yet some call it nonsense? ::rollseyes:: Hey Outlaw, you seem to have not even have read the question. This is about Iraq primarily and is about the fact that the Army General that investigated the abuses at the prisons in Iraq believes that the Bush Administration committed war crimes.

Public Comments

1. No
2. He is absolutely correct, search "iraq winter soldier".
3. Bravo. Bush should be held accountable for his lies and the deaths they caused.
4. Watch how fast nothing happens.
5. hahahahaha,must be murtha flapping his gums again.give it up dude,that mutt ain't gonna hunt........
6. There are many people saying he is guilty of war crimes. Doesn't make it true. A million people can say 2+2=5 all day long, but the power of wishful thinking only extends so far.
7. Why would that surprise me!!! ever see the old western "hang em high" your avatar is hot ,want to practice some "sexual humiliation" <smile> chow freepress
8. you cannot invade your neighbor's house and tell your neigbor how to run his family and look for his weapons....that's the job of the cops. At the same token can you not invade a country with fabricated accusations and tell them what government they should run......so by definition has Bush done just that, and that is a "war crime", because it's cost a lot of lives......
9. Only the lowest rank have been punished, but some have already testified that orders to "use whatever means necessary" came from the very top. Without a thorough investigation, we don't know who set the standards that make our country even more hated by those who follow Geneva conventions.
10. It’s a damn shame. For over 200 years, America represented a model of individual freedom and personal liberty established by a moral authority it had earned through deeds as well as words. In one brief Presidential term of office, George Bush flushed every bit of it down the toilet; and he did it because all he cared about was trying to establish his own personal greatness in history. It is amazing how much damage one pathetic excuse for a human being can do.
11. This is complete and utter nonsense; any serving officer is required by law to report the commission of any crime whether it be a violation of federal or international laws. What proof does he provide demonstrating a direct link between the individuals who may have committed these supposed 'war crimes' and President Bush? Because he says so is proof of absolutely nothing!
12. He's a sellout.
13. and now just watch how fast they call him a traitor...its their way, point fingers at the innocent
14. ((Deep sigh)) I guess Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba will now be called a "terrorist lover" and be stripped of his pension No one will be held accountable. Bush and Co. will get away with it
15. Means the military is finally turning on him. It's coup-time.
16. Yes I'm aware of these complaints.It's wrong and illegal.It's a foul in the war rule book.But in a war the goal is to be the winner,to protect the lives of your fellow soldiers,to go home to your family and friends alive.As a person that has war experience my opinion is that the torture was probably excessive but sometimes necessary.This is not a Hollywood movie here.All wars have fouls and i truly believe that the bush administration will not be effected by this.
17. No I did not know that, and thank you for the question. I still cling to hope that this moron will be prosecuted before he gets a chance to build a friggin library. Time to fire off another letter to my House Member and Senators. If anybody else wants to do so—and I urge you to, for remember, these people work for YOU—here is an easy way to do it, it takes all of 5 minutes online: Write Your Representative: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml Write Your Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC
18. Finally! I hope the traitor is brought to justice. At least it will go in the history books. At least one Congressman has brought impeachment charges against him. The great thing is that the Constitution that he disdained as just a damn piece of paper has a provision for him to be charged for crimes he committed while in office after he leaves office.!!
19. If anyone thinks that detaining enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay makes any of the detainees hate the United States more than when they were first captured on the battlefield trying to kill American soldiers, they are sadly mistaken. Look at the sources of information McClatchy uses: It is mainly Pakistani government and the detainees themselves. Neither group has proved themselves to be particularly trustworthy. McClatchy "reports" that most of the detainees are Taliban and al Qaida leaders and have organized themselves - complete with cell block leaders and everything. Why is this shocking? Organizations have done that forever when captured together in groups. It is what the US trains its military members to do in case of capture. And doesn't the very fact that he complains the Taliban and al Qaida leaders have organized dispute the very thesis of his article??? The process by which a detainee finds himself at Guatanamo Bay is lengthy. He goes through several hearings to determine if he is likely tied to terrorism. The average person is not just picked up on the battlefield, thrown on a C-130 and flown to Guantanamo Bay. He is picked up, detained in the country he was picked up in, his actions are investigated, he attends hearings with a military panel to determine the severity of his actions before he is sent to Guantanamo Bay. The detainee is presumed innocent until proven guilty. That is why they must present their case in a military tribunal much as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is doing right now. But let's face it ... these are not peaceful men. These are men who have killed and killed and killed and will kill again if given the chance. By McClatchy's own description, these men are the leaders of the Taliban and al Qaida. Some liberals want to banish Guantanamo Bay and release the detainees. Do we really want to release Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11? Do we want to give him and others another chance to really ratchet up the heat? Allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay have been around since day one. Of course the detainees are going to get together and come up with a unified story. They know the American left and a lot of the world will sit up and take notice when they all say they were tortured. However, where is the proof? There is none. Sure, the Americans have utilized aggressive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding and the aggressive utilization of women and dogs. However, these techniques were permissable by regulations when used and upon the order to discontinue their use, they were discontinued. Reporter after reporter after reporter has visited Guantanamo Bay and NOT ONE has every reported seeing anything out of the ordinary regarding the treatment of the detainees. With these al Qaida and Taliban leaders detained at Guantanamo Bay (again ... McClatchy's description), would you rather have these terrorists and killers detained at Guantanamo Bay where they cannot participage in the wholesale slaughter of innocent people or have them detained in Afghanistan where, after last week's attack, they'd be out killing again right now? Is it worth the risk to hold them in the middle east? And lastly, for those of you who accept these articles as gospel truth without really knowing what is going on, I leave you to ponder this. The highest ranking military officer to be court martialed since Viet Nam (Marine LTC Chessani) was cleared in the Haditha fiasco. It turns out that the story of the massacre originated from a detainee at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A reporter heard it, blindly accepted it and published it without checking any facts. Just goes to show you what a reporter blindly accepting the stories of detainees prisoners can do ...
20. Interesting question and no, I was not aware of General Taguba's statements. It's good to see that the "liberal" media has jumped all over this story.
21. Do you know individuals are held accountable for their actions in the Army? Retried Army, I have been to Iraq three times. Please tell me how the misconduct of individual soldiers is translated as the policy of the administration? If you step back and look at your article it's apparent that it is based on nothing. If I commit a crime as a soldier, I am held accountable for my actions, not the President. Otherwise, I could do whatever I wanted and claim the President told me to do it. Regardless, the torture techniques this article references were approved by Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Democratic Congress. Nancy Pelosi actually inquired if the techniques were harsh enough. Take the goggles off, stop drinking the liberal kool-aid, read below and quit loving the terrorist... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664_pf.html Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002 In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, December 9, 2007; A01 In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk. Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said. "The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange. Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup. Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge. With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan). Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement." Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack. "In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' " Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general. GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been disclosed. U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings. That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced interrogation" program would be treated as one of the nation's top secrets for fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, said U.S. officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said the administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost certainly condemn as abhorrent. Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out after a furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers over its legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of Congress -- beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its most sensitive activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the circle of those in the know widened. In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director said during a television interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." He said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a new interrogation program that President Bush formally announced over the summer "I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest to you that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is necessarily the program moving forward into the future."
22. GREAT Post/Ques. !! will have to find the time to read some of the more interesting ans. The 2000/04 Rigged elections has got We The PEOPLE on some Very Thin Ice .. How refreshing to Hear from a Young, Talented, Educated Patriotic American ... YOU GO GIRL !! ps-u-mightcheckout'multiply' http://www.uaff.us/deathcamps.htm