United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

ABC News reported Thursday — in a blog — that U.S. Army Maj. Gen. (ret.) Antonio Taguba says in a foreword that "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."[1] -- "[T]he Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," Gen. Taguba says. -- "This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors." -- In other words, "we are led by war criminals," as the title of a piece by Jay Bookman put it on the web site if the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.[2] -- The Washington Post reported the news, but suppressed the accusation of war crimes, effectively censoring Gen. Taguba's important charge by reporting only that "In a statement accompanying the report, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army's first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a 'systematic regime of torture' inside U.S.-run detention camps."[3] -- (Dan Froomkin of the Post was more forthright on a blog entry on the paper's web site.) -- AP reported in some detail on the report's findings and provided a link to the report.[4] -- The New York Times ignored both the report and Gen. Taguba's assertions. -- Kudos, however, to Pierce County's own News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) for putting Warren Strobel's McClatchy article on Taguba's text on its front page. -- COMMENT: That impeachment remains "off the table" for congressional leaders, that the drive to impeach is ignored by U.S. mainstream media in these circumstances, and that the American public tolerates this situation are striking facts that still await an adequate explanation....

Writing the forward [sic] to a Physicians for Human Rights study of 11 former detainees who were apparently tortured by US military personnel and later released, Army Maj. General Antonio Taguba (Ret.) writes that "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Taguba, who led the Army’s official investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal, says that the report from the doctors' human rights group based in Cambridge, Mass., "tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors."

The report -- titled Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by U.S. Personnel and Its Impact -- details medical evaluations of 11 former detainees held by the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. None were ever charged with any crime; all have since been released. The report describes how the 11 detainees suffered alleged beatings, sodomy, electric shock, involuntary medication, threats to their lives and families, shacklings, sleep deprivation, and other forms of abuse.

Taguba says "these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution. And so do the American people."

Army Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba led the military’s investigation into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, and he did so honestly and forthrightly. As reward for doing his job well, he was forced to retire from the service he loved.

The two-star general has now written a forward to a report on widespread, systematic, officially sanctioned torture by U.S. soldiers and civilians. His conclusion is stunning:

“This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors. . . .

"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. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

The truth will emerge, and when it does this nation’s reputation will be seriously damaged in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of its own people. Our shame will be compounded by the fact that for so long we dumped blame for Abu Ghraib and other atrocities on the very lowest soldiers in the chain of command, those powerless to protect themselves, while allowing those at the top of that chain of command to claim clean hands.

The first extensive medical examinations of former detainees in U.S. military jails offer corroboration for prisoners' claims of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their American captors, a Boston-based human rights group said in a report released yesterday.

The assessments of 11 men formerly held in U.S. detention camps overseas revealed scars and other injuries consistent with their accounts of beatings, electric shocks, shackling, and, in at least one case, sodomy, according to the report by Physicians for Human Rights. Most also had symptoms of long-term psychological damage, including post-traumatic stress disorder, the group said.

The physicians' group, which in recent years has been critical of the administration's detention policies, arranged for a battery of exams for 11 former detainees who had spent an average of three years in detention at U.S. facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Teams of medical specialists conducted physical and psychological tests, including exams intended to assess if the subjects were lying.

The evaluations backed up the men's stories of physical and sexual assault and documented psychological damage that had left many of them severely impaired, the report said. For example, exams and X-rays of one of the former detainees showed scars and joint injuries that supported his description of being suspended for hours by his arms at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

All 11 men were eventually released from custody without being charged with crimes.

In a statement accompanying the report, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army's first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a "systematic regime of torture" inside U.S.-run detention camps.

A Pentagon spokesman yesterday criticized the report, saying its authors had drawn "sweeping conclusions based upon dubious allegations" of former detainees who had been out of U.S. custody for years.

"The quality of medical care we provide detainees is similar to that which our troops serving in the same locations receive," said the spokesman, Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon. "We have robust psychological and mental health care available to detainees."

REPORT: FORMER DETAINEES STILL SUFFER FROM TRAUMA
By Jamal Halaby and Pamela Hess

AMMAN, Jordan -- Former detainees from American military jails in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and lingering physical injuries and scars that can be traced to their imprisonment, according to a human rights group.

Ali Shallal al-Qaisi, a former inmate at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and one of those cited in the Physicians for Human Rights report, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that his U.S. captors sodomized him and forced him to stay naked for several weeks at a time.

"I had dogs sniffing and barking at me. I had women captors kicking me in the crotch," al-Qaisi said in an interview at his Amman, Jordan office. After spending six months in U.S. custody in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004, al-Qaisi founded a non-profit group in Jordan for fellow victims.

A lawyer for Iraqi detainees, Susan Burke, confirmed that al-Qaisi was cited in the report even though Physicians for Human Rights used pseudonyms for privacy reasons.

The report from the Cambridge, Mass.-based advocacy group, which investigates abuse around the world and advocates for global health and human rights, was obtained by the AP before its official release.

It is the most extensive medical study of former detainees published so far to determine whether their stories of abuse at American hands could be corroborated with physical evidence. It followed standards and methods used worldwide to document torture.

Doctors and mental health professionals examined 11 former prisoners in intensive two-day sessions. All the prisoners were freed without charges, either innocent or not valuable enough to the military to hold.

The group alleges it found evidence of U.S. torture and war crimes, and said some U.S. military health professionals allowed the abuse of detainees, denying them medical care and providing confidential medical information to interrogators which was then exploited.

"Some of these men really are, several years later, very severely scarred," said Barry Rosenfeld, a psychology professor at Fordham University who conducted psychological tests on six of the 11 detainees covered by the study. "It's a testimony to how bad those conditions were and how personal the abuse was."

The report came as the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed documents showing military lawyers warned the Pentagon that some of the methods it used to interrogate and hold detainees after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks violated military, U.S., and international law. Those objections were overruled by the top Pentagon lawyer, who said he was unaware of the criticism.

President Bush said in 2004, when the prison abuse was revealed, that it was the work of "a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values." Bush and other U.S. officials have consistently denied that the U.S. tortures its detainees.

Seven of the former detainees in the study were held at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq between late 2003 and the summer of 2004, a period that coincides with the known abuse of prisoners at the hands of some of their American jailers. Four of the former detainees were held in the detention center at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, beginning in 2002 for one to almost five years. All 11 were released without criminal charges. None are identified in the report to respect their privacy.

Those examined alleged that they were tortured or abused, including sexually, and described being shocked with electrodes, beaten, shackled, stripped of their clothes, deprived of food and sleep, and spit and urinated on.

One former Iraqi prisoner, identified in the report only as Yasser, said he was subjected to electric shocks three times and sodomized with a stick. His thumbs bore round scars consistent with shocking, the report said. He would not allow a full rectal exam.

Another Iraqi, identified only as Rahman, reported he was humiliated by being forced to wear women's underwear, stripped naked, and paraded in front of female guards, and was shown pictures of other naked detainees. The psychological exam found that Rahman suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and has enduring sexual problems related to his humiliation, the report said.

The abuse of some prisoners by their American captors is well documented by the government's own reports. Once-secret documents show that the Pentagon and Justice Department allowed, at least for a time, forced nakedness, isolation, sleep deprivation and humiliation both at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison.

Because the medical examiners did not have access to the 11 patients' medical histories prior to their imprisonment, it was not possible to know whether any of the prisoners' ailments, disabilities, and scars pre-dated their confinement. The U.S. military says an al-Qaida training manual instructs members, if captured, to assert they were tortured during interrogation.

However, doctors and mental health professionals stated they could link the prisoners' claims of abuse while in U.S. detention to injuries documented by X-rays, medical exams, and psychological tests.

"The level of the time, thoroughness, and rigor of the exams left me personally without question about the credibility of the individuals," said Dr. Allen Keller, one of the doctors who conducted the exams, in an interview with the AP. "The findings on the physical and psychological exams were consistent with what they reported."

--Stress positions, including being suspended for hours by the arms or tightly shackled for days.

--Prolonged isolation and hooding or blindfolding, a form of sensory deprivation.

--Threats against themselves, their families or friends from interrogators or guards.

Ten said they were forced to be naked, some for days or weeks. Nine said they were subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation. At least six said they were threatened with military working dogs, often while naked. Four reported being sodomized, subjected to anal probing, or threatened with rape.

"We found clear physical and psychological evidence of torture and abuse, often causing lasting suffering," he said.

Said Rosenfeld: "If anything I think some of these guys really downplayed the severity of the symptoms and the severity of what happened to them, because it's embarrassing. If you are a proud macho man its very hard to admit you've been victimized in that way."

Keller, who directs the Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, said the treatment the detainees reported were "eerily familiar" to stories from other torture survivors around the world. He said the sexual humiliation of the prisoners was often the most traumatic experience.

Most former detainees are out of reach of Western doctors because they are either in Iraq or have been returned to their home countries from Guantanamo.

--Halaby reported on this story from Amman, and Hess reported from Washington.