From David Fiderer at HuffPo. You’ll want to read this.

“When General Antonio Taguba investigated the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he soon realized that General Ricardo Sanchez, the army commander in Iraq, “knew exactly what was going on.” But Taguba’s report did not implicate Sanchez, because his assignment had a very limited scope.

“As directed by Sanchez, the inquiry was limited to the operations at the 800th Military Police Brigade, under the Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, beginning on November 1, 2003. Weeks before that date, Guantanamo commander General Geoffrey Miller made a 10-day visit to Iraq, between August 31 and September 9, 2003, when he recommended that soldiers start “GITMO-izing” interrogations at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Five days after Miller’s visit, Sanchez signed a memo authorizing interrogation techniques that violated both the Geneva conventions and the army field manual. A few weeks later, during October 2003, Miller briefed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary Steven Cambone as to his recommendations for interrogating civilian detainees in Iraq.

“Taguba’s report had suggested that Miller’s actions had contributed to the atmosphere of abuse at the prison. Nonetheless, following the release of the report in March 2004, Miller was brought back to Iraq to replace Karpinski and to assume control of Abu Ghraib operations.

“The story of Taguba’s report reflects a truism applicable to every investigation: When large swaths of information are declared off limits, the resulting work product may be fatally flawed. The findings may be used as a whitewash, if not a cover-up. This truism is ignored constantly by the media, in stark contrast to the time of the Watergate hearings, when an 18-minute gap in Nixon’s White House tapes was considered a very big deal.”

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