General Antonio Taguba -- "the current administration has committed war crimes."

There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

That statement by retired U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, is found in the preface of the report, released Wednesday, by Physicians for Human Rights. The report, called BROKEN LAWS, BROKEN LIVES -- Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact, is a major indictment of senior officials in the Bush administration, to say the least. The lack of attention the release of the report is getting in the U.S. media is another important story, too. Locally, the Anchorage Daily News doesn't seem to have carried any portion of the McClatchy Washington, D.C. Bureau's five-part series on recent prisoner abuses worldwide, while in U.S. forces' custody.

In an essay early this morning, blogger Scarecrow, writing at firedoglake, puts the cumulative findings of Physicians for Human Rights and the McClatchy series, succinctly:

The most senior attorneys in the White House, the OVP, DoJ and DoD secretly planned and orchestrated this unlawful detention and interrogation system. They knew the system was outside accepted legal boundaries, that it violated the Geneva Conventions and US laws prohibiting torture. They hid the most abused detainees from the Red Cross, according to Senate discovered documents. Knowing they were authorizing crimes, the cabal conspired to create an extralegal cover, approved by the President, to shield themselves and those who carried out the abuses from criminal liability. Attorneys who protested were transferred. None of these people has been held accountable.

As some may recall, Gen. Taguba was tasked by ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to get to the bottom of charges of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, back in 2004. His report was probably supposed to cover up the extent of abuse and the levels at which the abuse had been approved. At the time, President Bush was throwing out the "a few bad apples" story about Abu Ghraib abuses, a story that was lapped up by most media commentators, and 100% of right-wing talk radio.

Gen. Taguba's report did not cover up the abuses. It found extensive evidence of planned abuse and torture by our military, and hints that it had been approved at the highest levels of our military. With the release of the report, Taguba found his Army career over. He was one of many examples in the Bush administration of how honesty is punished.

The 2004 Taguba Report is available here. Yesterday, Democracy Now devoted several minutes of their daily news report to this issue. The 2008 Physicians for Human Rights is available as a PDF download, but you have to sign up there to get it. Sign-up is free.

Here is Gen. Taguba's preface to their report, in its entirety:

This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual’s lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors. The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full-scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted —both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.

In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account. The former detainees in this report, each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life, require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government. But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.

And so do the American people.

Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret .)