The General’s Report

Seymour Hersh
The New Yorker
June 25, 2007

On the afternoon of May 6 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

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The Redirection

Seymour M. Hersh
The New Yorker
March 5, 2007

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated the Bush Administration, in both it public diplomacy and its cover operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in part of the region, propelled it into widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

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