Taguba’s report on Abu Ghraib

I stayed up very late the other night to watch live on CNN the U.S. Senate investigation of the torture committed by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison, with U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone and Lt. Gen. Lance Smith testifying.

Philippines-born Taguba, a true-brown kayumanggi, is the author of the report that details the shameless acts done to Iraqi detainees by members of the 800th MP Brigade assigned in Abu Ghraib. Gen. Taguba reaped a rain of praises for his no-nonsense report and testimony and for calling intentional abuse intentional abuse.

You must have seen those disgusting photographs that came out starting last week, photographs of naked Iraqi detainees being humiliated, tortured, piled one on top of another like carcass. Being photographed and videotaped while in that humiliated state added to the intensity of the torment. The bad news is that there’s more than what we saw in photos.

How could something like this have happened in this day and age? Yes, Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler do not have the monopoly of evil. Their evil spirit lives on in some U.S. military personnel. If I were an American, I would be red-faced. If I were an American citizen I would write my very own individual letter of apology to the world, to the people of Iraq and to the detainees in Abu Ghraib prison.

Senators, among them Sen. Hillary Clinton, focused on the acts of humiliation and torture detailed on page 16 and 17 of Taguba’s 53-page report. I later downloaded the report from the Internet. Here are those portions that the world ought to read not only for their shock value but also so that people may be forewarned about more 9/11s. This is the very thing that begets hatred.



Here’s Gen. Taguba reporting: ``I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a)Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees, jumping on their naked feet; b)Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; c)Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; d)Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; e)Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; f)Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; g)Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; h)Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wire to his fingers, toes and penis to simulate electric torture; i)Writing `I am a Rapest’ (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year-old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; j)Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture; k) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; l)Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case, biting and severely injuring a detainee; m) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.’’

There’s more, like breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees, sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate with threats of attack, and in one instance, to bite a detainee.

These torturers could not even spell the word rapist correctly and they were sent there, to run a prison facility and handle detainees? Taguba’s testimony pointed to this lack of proper training and preparation of personnel. He also told the senate that the cameras used were privately owned. Trip lang nila.

And there was this problem that the detainees concerned could not be classified as prisoners of war (POW) who had specific rights under the articles of the Geneva Conventions. The detainees were mostly captured offenders and suspected terrorists. But POW or not, human beings, terrorists included, have the right to be treated humanely.

Taguba also pointed out that very few, if at all, had read a copy of the Geneva Conventions in that neck of Iraq. What? (Why, I even have a copy of my own. The Red Cross has plenty.)

A big let-down for me—the 800th MP Brigade is under the command of Gen. Janis Karpinski, a woman. One of the six or seven suspected perpetrators of the inhumane acts is a woman-soldier. Oh no.

The 53-year-old Taguba has been made much of especially by the Filipino-American communities and publications in the U.S. since his report came out. Born in Sampaloc in 1950, Taguba’s roots are in Cagayan. The general is the son of World War II veteran Tomas Taguba, survivor of the Bataan Death March and recipient of a Bronze Star and a Prisoner of War medal. The elder Taguba had served in South Korea, Germany and Okinawa, spending many years as a motor-pool sergeant. He rose to the rank of sergeant 1st class before he retired in 1962.

In an article in AsianWeek, writer Bert Eljera says Antonio Taguba was 11 when his family moved to Hawaii. After high school, Taguba enrolled at Idaho State University where he graduated in 1972. He joined the U.S. Army and rose through the ranks. He attended prestigious military training schools. He holds three master’s degrees. He commanded a tank company of a mechanized division in Germany and was a battalion commander and then executive officer of the combined Republic of Korea-U.S. Forces in Korea. Taguba is the second Filipino-American general in the U.S. Army.

It was his mother and his grandmother, Taguba said, who had the most influence on his life.