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Tuesday, May 11, 2004 10:12 a.m. EDT
'Embittered' Gen. Taguba Had Grudge Against Army, Rumsfeld

The military investigator who set off a firestorm of controversy with his damaging report accusing U.S. MPs of abusing detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison is said to be "bitter" over what he regarded as the Army's mistreatment of his own father after World War II.

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, author of the now notorious Taguba Report, also recently served under former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, a critic of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who challenged Rumsfeld's early estimates of the number of troops needed to win the Iraq war.

"General Taguba went out of his way in 2001 to call attention to what he described as the injustice the Army had accorded his father after a two-decade career that began in the Battle of Bataan in 1942, where he fought alongside American forces," the New York Times reports in Tuesday editions.

His father, Staff Sgt. Tomas Taguba, left the Army "without so much as a retirement ceremony to thank him for those 20 years of hard work and faithful service," the son complained at a 2001 Veterans Day ceremony.

The Times said Gen. Taguba spoke with "evident bitterness" as he detailed the injustice done by the military to his father, who was among 10,000 Filipinos who were essentially drafted into American service after the outbreak of World War II.

Noting that Secretary Rumsfeld had "derided" Gen. Shinseki's recommendations, the Times said that Taguba's initial investigation into the abuse at Abu Ghraib was supposed to be limited to the conduct of a single military police brigade. However, "Taguba used it to deliver a much broader indictment" that cast suspicion on higher-ups, the paper said.

While some of Taguba's lesser charges of abuse at Abu Ghraib were backed by photographs and confessions by some MPs, he relied solely on the allegations of detained Iraqis suspected of terrorism to deliver his most damaging allegations, which included accusations of inmate beatings and GIs committing sodomy with a broomstick.

In his report Taguba admitted that these charges were supported only by "statements provided by the following detainees, which under the circumstances I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses."

He then listed the accusers and witnesses, all of whom were suspected Iraqi terrorists who had been singled out for intensive interrogation.