Iraq abuses: Army knew months ago

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/26/1085461838353.html

An Australian military officer stationed in Baghdad was aware of allegations of prisoner abuse as early as last October and passed details to Australian officers in regular reports, the Herald has learnt.

The revelation undercuts repeated Federal Government and Defence Department assurances that they knew nothing of the abuses, especially because Major George O'Kane, a legal officer, liaised directly with the Red Cross from the time it first complained of abuses.

<snip>

Major O'Kane knew of the photographs but did not see them, sources said. He had also been aware of the central thrust of General Taguba's report in February outlining "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib.

<snip>

It is understood that there were at least two other Australian military lawyers with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) on six-month deployments - Colonel Mike Kelly and Lieutenant Colonel Paul Muggleton. The CPA was also told of the ICRC's concerns.

<snip>

At least one Red Cross concern handled by Major O'Kane and his colleagues concerned a complaint of torture of a "very serious" nature. However, Defence sources maintain that the images seen around the world were far worse than the accounts of mistreatment that were relayed to US headquarters.

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so those denials about when they knew are kind of shot to shit

that will destroy Bushco, by that I mean pre internet there would be no way this deadly little fact of Auzzy officers being aware 4-5 mos before their denial . Kinda makes ya wanna love the information age a little don't it?

cuz he invented it, doncha know. ;-)

testified to this fact when he had to appear before Congressional committee hearings 2 weeks ago. I remember reading that.

Of course, HE hadn't seen anything. I recall reading later that the Pentagon acknowledged that yes, there was a report filed in January of 2004. But I believe something was reported even earlier than that. I believe Rumsfeld was busy putting photos into photo albums. He's got enough photos to last him a while now.

This is a non-starter, as Ari Fleischer used to say. (Sorry, I shouldn't be quoting that hopeless fool).

:kick:

It's just that they had to address the situation when those damn pictures came out. Otherwise, this whole tortured prisoners thing would have gone the way of every other atrocity perpetrated by the military in our name and with our money in the last three years.

But because of the lag time in publishing the photos, the more dimwitted tools for the corrupt Bush administration have been able to say that the prison torture was a reprisal for the four "contractors" burned and hung from the bridge in Fallujah.