The war on terrorism has a number of silenced Cassandras — figures whose careers suffered because of their candor or wisdom regarding the conduct of the war, and whose response has been to embrace silence and seclusion. General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff who warned that occupying Iraq would require hundreds of thousands more troops than the administration intended to provide, is perhaps the most famous. A close second is Major General Antonio Taguba, whose 2004 inquiry into the “systemic” abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison complex set off an international scandal. But now Taguba has come forward, telling Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker that Donald Rumsfeld essentially ended his career for violating a precious trust — the ex-defense secretary’s cherished plausible deniability about the consequences of his interrogation regime.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=180613