A retired US Army general has denied reports that he has seen the pictures of prisoner abuse in Iraq that President Barack Obama is fighting to keep secret.
Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported Thursday that retired Army Major General Antonio Taguba, the lead investigator into Abu Ghraib abuse, had seen images Obama wanted suppressed, and supported the president’s decision to fight their release.
The paper quoted Taguba as saying, "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."
But Taguba told Salon magazine late Friday that he wasn’t talking about the 44 photographs that are the subject of an ongoing American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit that Obama is fighting.
"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba said.
The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said. But he said he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.
