Gen. Taguba Says Telegraph Quoted Him Correctly on Prisoner ‘Rape’ Photos

Taguba, however, now says that the photos he saw are not part of the ones at the center of an ACLU lawsuit. So where are the ‘rape’ photos Taguba described?

By Jeremy Scahill

Just a day after White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs smeared the entire British media over a damning report in one British paper, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba says that Britain’s Daily Telegraph quoted him correctly when he told the paper last week he had seen pictures depicting heinous acts commited against prisoners by US personnel that “show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.” On Friday, Gibbs said “you’re not gonna find many of these [British] newspapers and ‘truth’ within say 25 words of each other.”

While standing by his on-the-record remarks to the Telegraph, Taguba, however, now says that the photos to which he was referring were not among 44 pictures the ACLU is fighting to have released but which the Obama administration has blocked. He told Salon’s Mark Benjamin Friday night, “The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen. According to Benjamin, “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.”

At present, the Obama administration is blocking the release of some 2,000 photos allegedly depicting prisoner abuse and torture. While many horrifying photos have been published over the years by various media outlets (including Salon), it does not seem that the ones exactly matching Taguba’s descriptions have been publicly revealed. This is what the Telegraph reported:

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in [Taguba’s] 2004 report [on Abu Ghraib] but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

So, the question still looms: where are these photos and videos? Presumably, Obama has access to all of the photos. Interestingly, the White House and Pentagon attacked the Telegraph and not Maj. Gen. Taguba. Now, he has come out and said with 100% certainty to a US media outlet (in addition to the lying, dirty British media) that he has seen photos that “show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.” Will the White House deny these exist? That is the real question now. Don’t expect Taguba to join the efforts calling for the photos to be released.

In the Salon interview, Taguba reiterated his support for Obama’s efforts to suppress the photos, saying, “No other photographs should be released.”