Torture and Truth: The Taguba Report and the Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

Mark Danner, Torture and Truth. The New York Review of Books, 10 June 2004. The first of two articles. (The second of the two articles is here.) “Abu Ghraib contained within its walls last fall [2003]—as the war heated up and American soldiers, desperate for “actionable intelligence,” spent many an autumn evening swooping down on Iraqi homes, kicking in doors, and carrying away hooded prisoners into the night—well over eight thousand Iraqis. Could it be that “between 70 percent and 90 percent” of them were “arrested by mistake”? And if so, which of the naked, twisted bodies that television viewers and news paper readers around the world have been gazing at these last weeks were among them? Perhaps the seven bodies piled up in that great coil, buttocks and genitals exposed to the camera? Or the bodies bound one against another on the cellblock floor? Or the body up against the bars, clenched before the teeth of barking police dogs?”

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