It’s past time for Senator Carl Levin to call General Anthony Teguba and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before the Senate Armed Services Committee to testify about Abu Ghraib.
The White House on Sunday insisted that President George W. Bush first learned about abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison from media reports, contrary to assertions by a former top general that Bush likely knew about the scandal before it broke.
“The President said over three years ago that he first saw the pictures of the abuse on television,” said White House spokesperson Scott Stanzel in Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending the weekend at his ranch.
Stanzel was responding to questions about a New Yorker magazine report quoting the top military investigator of the Abu Ghraib scandal, retired Army Major General Antonio Taguba, as saying “the president had to be aware” of the abuse of prisoners by US military guards at the facility.
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“The question you have to ask about the president is this: No matter when he learned — and certainly he learned before it became public, and no matter how detailed it was — is there any evidence that the president of the United States said to Rumsfeld, what’s going on there, Don? Let’s get an investigation going,” [investigative reporter Seymour] Hersh told CNN.