Abu Ghraib Investigator: ‘You Can’t Sweep Unlawful Activities Under the Table’
Mark Benjamin, Salon: President Obama vowed that “the United States will not torture” only two days into his new administration. But one big question Obama hasn’t answered is whether and how to investigate notorious Bush-era interrogation and detention policies.
On Thursday, 18 human rights organizations, former State Department officials and former law enforcement and military leaders asked the president to create a non-partisan commission to investigate those allegedly abusive detention practices.
Retired Major Gen. Tony Taguba, who investigated the famed abuses at Abu Ghraib, signed on to the effort. He explained his support in an interview with Salon. Taguba agrees with many attorneys who think it would be difficult, and perhaps impossible, to prosecute former Bush administration officials.
A non-partisan fact-finding commission, however, might provide some degree of accountability for official U.S. detention and interrogation policies that Taguba called misguided and illegal.
