It seems that Ret. Major General Antonio Taguba has spilled the beans to The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh with regards to Donald Rumsfeld’s, and possibly even President Bush’s, knowledge of the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib. According to The Independent…

“The two-star Army General who led the first military investigation into human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has bluntly questioned the integrity of former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, suggesting he misled the US Congress by downplaying his own prior knowledge of what had happened.

Major General Antonio Taguba also claimed in an interview with The New Yorker magazine published yesterday that President George Bush also “had to be aware” of the atrocities despite saying at the time of the scandal that he had been out of the loop until he saw images in the US media.

The White House issued a response denying the claim, however. “The President said over three years ago that he first saw the pictures of the abuse on the television,” Scott Stanzel, a spokesman, said.

In the extensive interview, Maj-Gen Taguba insisted that at the very least Mr Rumsfeld “was in denial” at a congressional hearing in May 2004, when he said he had only become aware of the extent of the abuse - and seen some of the shocking photographic evidence - one day before. The Secretary told members of Congress that the images published in the media were “not yet in the Pentagon”.

Mr Rumsfeld had summoned Maj-Gen Taguba to the Pentagon on the eve of the hearing, which took place one week after first US media reports of the abuse surfaced in The New Yorker and on CBS News. Yet the General had begun his investigation several months earlier, in January 2004, and had circulated his finished report to Pentagon managers - with pictures and a video - several weeks before seeing Mr Rumsfeld. “The photographs were available to him - if he wanted to see them,” Maj-Gen Taguba said.

As for the Secretary’s congressional appearance, he claimed: “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from CRS - Can’t Remember Shit. He’s trying to acquit himself.”

Mr Bush has since conceded that the abuse at Abu Ghraib is the one thing he regrets about the war in Iraq. The photographs that became public at the time - and sparked worldwide condemnation - showed US jailers humiliating inmates who were naked, hooded, on leashes or piled into a human pyramid.

Maj-Gen Taguba said that other material not yet publicly disclosed or mentioned in subsequent trials included a video showing “a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee”. The first wave of images he received also included images of sexual humiliation between a father and his son.

The General said he was ordered to limit his inquiry into the conduct of military police at the jail even as he became convinced they had a green light from higher up. “Somebody was giving them guidance but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.” He adds: “Even today … those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

The General also tells the New Yorker that he became a victim of his own dedication to finding the truth when he was subsequently forced to retire early. In early 2006, he said, he received a phone call from a higher-ranking colleague telling him he was expected to retire by January this year, after more than 30 years of service. His conclusion: he was being punished for that first investigation.

“They always shoot the messenger,” Maj-Gen Taguba told Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal - that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracised for doing what I was asked to do.”

There is one passage in that piece that should be of absolute paramount importance to every person on the planet…

“Maj-Gen Taguba said that other material not yet publicly disclosed or mentioned in subsequent trials included a video showing “a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee”. The first wave of images he received also included images of sexual humiliation between a father and his son.”

So a US soldier sodomized a female detainee and a boy and his father were forced to conduct humiliating sexual acts? Now you tell me how the existence of that footage has been kept from the American people, let alone the world? And in saying that, what does the fact that it has say about the people refusing to release it? That it’s too graphic? That it’s unsuitable? Or that it is so utterly disgusting and damning that it should, as it should have in the first place, rocked the very foundations of the administration itself?

These are war crimes, plain and simple. And it is not only for those who conducted the acts to be held accountable, but for those that placed them in the position to do so. Because if that is not the case, then the sentences handed down at Nuremburg might as well be expunged because none of those men were physically involved in the war crimes for which they were tried. And spare me the you can’t use the German analogy because had the war in the Pacific gone the other way the US could very well have been tried for war crimes for the bombing of Japan and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and I’m not talking about the use of the atomic bomb either.

The US conveniently opted out if the ICC for this very reason, and that should be a telling gesture given what has gone on during the occupation of Iraq.

Were the United States not the world’s preeminent super power, characterizing the President and various members of his administration, past and present, as war criminals would not be thought absurd. For in the end, the supposed principles of the United States are only as useful as the military might that its federal government possesses to justify obliterating them.