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WASHINGTON -- US Army Major Gen. Antonio M. Taguba (Ret.), breaking his silence to the media in nearly four years, said former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others must “be held accountable” for American military and civilian abuses against Iraqi detainees in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

Taguba alleged in a June article by Seymour Hersh of New Yorker magazine that “Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.”

Taguba was deputy commander for infrastructure based in nearby Kuwait when he was assigned to conduct an investigation on Abu Ghraib. His internal report in March 2004 that Iraqi detainees were tortured was leaked by others to Hersh and CBS-TV that year.

Public outrage in America and in the Muslim countries resulted from the 2004 leaked report and photos and later, videos of prisoners being “stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated” surfaced on TV.

Investigative reporter Hersh noted in his June article that an independent panel, led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, concluded there was “institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels for Abu Ghraib, but cleared Rumsfeld of any direct responsibility.”

According to Hersh, a Pentagon spokesman replied to his requests for detailed information for his article, saying in an email, “The department did not promulgate interrogation policies or guidelines that directed, sanctioned, or encouraged abuse. When there have been abuses, those violations are taken seriously, acted upon promptly, investigated thoroughly, and the wrongdoers are held accountable.”

Principles

Taguba told Hersh in the June article: “From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service. And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values.

He added: “I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

The Washington Post ran a story on June 17 based on the New Yorker article, which was posted online in its website in advance of the June 25 publication date. On June 18, Bing Cardenas Branigin, media and community liaison officer of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), asked Taguba on his reaction to the story, and his on-going support of the NaFFAA campaign for pension benefits of Filipino World War II veterans.

Taguba told Branigin he was “not bitter,” and he did not want to be portrayed in the media as such. He told her the whole thing “was more than just about me.” According to Branigin, Taguba, former US Army Chief of Staff Eric K. Shinseki, and other retired servicemen are concerned about the Army as an institution.

The US Army asked Taguba to retire last January after his 34 years of service. In an interview last year before receiving his American Courage Award from the Asian American Justice Center (AAJC) based here, he replied to this writer’s question matter-of-factly, “I am resigned to the fact that I will not get that third star” before he retires.

During his term, Shinseki’s Senate testimony that to be successful, postwar Iraq operations needed hundreds of thousands of US troops was disputed by Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials. Since retiring in 2003, Shinseki’s views have been vindicated in the media, including in a Washington Post editorial. Taguba and Shinseki were not available for comments at press time.

Also on June 18, the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans, based in this US capital, urged veteran Sen. John Warner (Republican, Virginia) and new Sen. Jim Webb (Democrat, Virginia), who are in the armed services committee, “to investigate this outrageous treatment of General Taguba by then Secretary Rumsfeld and his Pentagon aides and to hold them accountable for their misdeeds if the evidence warrants.”

In 2004 Warner, then chairman of the armed services committee, called a public hearing on the Abu Ghraib report. Taguba testified on May 7, 2004. A closed-door House committee hearing followed the next day, but no action resulted from the hearings. Reporter Hersh said US Representative David Obey (D-WI) told him, “One of the things that bugs me is that Congress has failed in its oversight abilities.”

Recently, however, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), who replaced Warner when the Democrats took over the 110th US Congress in January, has requested the military for more data on Abu Ghraib.