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A couple of days ago the Daily Telegraph put out a report supposedly suggesting that the pictures President Obama kept from being released in connection with abuse at Abu Grhaib included instances of rape and other forms of sexual assault. The main selling point for the authenticity of the story was that they quoted a retired General Antonio Taguba as saying he had seen the pictures himself in the course of investigating abuses at the prison. Now because of the Telegraph’s shady credibility in my opinion, I decided to hold back on weighing in. I figured I would wait to make sure what they were saying was actually credible before I flew into some kind of misguided rant. Yesterday Mike Scherer of Time Magazine pushed back on the story a little, but lets face it, nobody really respects the guy. Besides that he hadn’t talked to Taguba to see whether he confirmed or denied the story. Well finally today Salon writer Mark Benjamin reached Gen Taguba for comment and he debunked the story.
May 30, 2009 Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba denied reports that he has seen the prisoner-abuse photos that President Obama is fighting to keep secret, in an exclusive interview with Salon Friday night.
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.
Now that still doesn’t mean President Obama was right to oppose releasing the pictures but there just isn’t any there there with this story.
Crossposted at Smooth Like Remy
4 Comments
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Umm. Ok.
Lemme get this straight, ’cause I’m a little unclear on the argument.
SOME abu ghraib pictures show rape, but these don’t, so we should be happy?
But these won’t be released because they are inflammatory, even though they don’t show rape, but thank goodness no one is asking for an FOIA release of the pictures that DO show rape?
My goodness, it makes a fellah proud to be an American.
I mean, I can’t understand for a bloody second why they might want to fight us, being the great humanitarians and fair minded political players that everyone can clearly see we are…
mikey
No we definitely shouldn’t be happy. The point is that the rape allegations have been around and reported on for some time but the Telegraph basically invented a story out of whole cloth to pull a bait and switch and make it seem as if President Obama had lied about the content of the photos that he refused to release. But honestly they do that kind of shit fairly regularly which is why I didn’t link to the story at first. But if you look around, several liberal/progressive sites did and indeed denounced President Obama for “lying” to the American people. That was the point of the post. If you notice at the end I said it didn’t absolve him of blocking the release of the other photos even if they didn’t contain the scenes of rape and sexual abuse. But the story is just factually wrong and a lot of people bought it hook line and sinker.
The Obama admin. has every right to bring a new argument before the court, previous rulings have been against bush admin.
This post is very narrowly about all the panic and mockery that arose with Obama’s statement that the photos he was going to court over were “not that inflammatory.” No need to be so jumpy.
You know, mikey, a lot of the counterinsurgency qualities you read about on this blog have parallel application in political and internet discussion. It’s not always best to be vicious, and leaving yourself open to accusations of bullshitery is generally just as bad as deliberate bullshit.