The Washington Post has more Abu Ghraib pictures, including this one, which by my count shows either eight or nine soldiers walking around while Iraqi prisoners are being forced into simulated sex acts. Considering how casually they’re all taking this, it’s hard not to believe that there’s at least two or three times that many who were involved in this, and maybe a lot more.
Seymour Hersh, for one, thinks a lot more. On O’Reilly’s show Monday he said this:
I can tell you just from the phone calls I’ve had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn’t want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women’s section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It’s much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.
And this:
O’REILLY: All right. Well, the damage to the country obviously is just immeasurable. But reading your article in “The New Yorker.” I just get the feeling that the Army, when they heard about it, started action almost immediately. It wasn’t a cover-up situation. Or did I read your article wrong?
HERSH: This guy Taguba is brilliant. He could have made a living doing — it’s a credit to the Army that somebody with that kind of integrity would write this kind of — it’s 53-page report.
O’REILLY: OK, but Sanchez the commander put him in charge fairly quickly. They mobilized fairly quickly.
HERSH: No, look, I don’t want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.
One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it’s very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.
Oh man, oh man, oh man…..
