Facts On The Abu Ghraib WhistleblowerMajor General Antonio M. Taguba is the Abu Ghraib Whistleblower. Abu Ghraib is a prison located twenty miles west of Baghdad that came into the spotlight for being a place where prisoners are tortured, executed weekly, and vile living conditions. Just take into account the fact that at one point, around fifty thousand men and women were jammed into Abu Ghraib, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells. In April 2003, Abu Ghraib was converted to a U.S. military prison filled with civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. But complaint started when a fifty-three-page report written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba was obtained by the 'The New Yorker'. The conclusions in it highlighted the failures of the Army prison system. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. In January 2008, Abu Ghraib Whistleblower Samuel Provance spoke out on the torture and cover-up that happened. Samuel Provance is a former Army sergeant, who ran the top-secret computer network used by Military Intelligence at Abu Ghraib, from September 2003 to the spring of 2004. He was the first intelligence specialist to speak openly about abuse at the prison and is the only Military Intelligence soldier listed as a witness in the Taguba report. After he went public on Abu Gharib, he was immediately stripped off his security clearance, demoted and threatened with ten years in jail. There are some quite stunning evindences to support the allegations of the Abu Ghraib Whistleblower. Soldiers took photos and videos as the abuses were happening. Several of the photographes were broadcasted on CBS's "60 Minutes 2" showing leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six of the US military suspects are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. It's obvious that such dehumanization as the one that took place in Abu Gharib is unacceptable in any culture, but it's even more unacceptable in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men. Bernard Haykel who is a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University explained the following: "Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other - it's all a form of torture." The new IRS whistleblower act provides certain reward for reporting a fraud against the government, no matter if it's in Florida or Pennsylvania. But the main thing is tha the complaint must be based on real evidence, not an article that you read in a magazine, in order to gain a whistleblower statue and be assigned a lawyer. |