General Myers with George Stephanopoulos, ABC's This Week
partial transcript:
NOTE: The report is 3 months old!
MYERS: As soon as we found out about those allegations, we sent a team over to look at -- not just in Abu Ghraib but theater-wide -- the conditions of all our detainees and how they were being handled, just to make sure it wasn't systematic.
And the reports back is that it is not systematic, but that work is still ongoing...
STEPHANOPOULOS: But Mr. Hersh did have this 53-page report from General [Antonio] Taguba...that certainly sounds systematic --
MYERS: I haven't seen that report and I prefer not to comment on something that I haven't seen. But I know what actions we took --
STEPHANOPOULOS: You haven't seen General Taguba's report?
MYERS: No, I have not seen it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not?
MYERS: Well, like I said, I know what we did, and what we did was we got the Deputy Secretary of Defense to ask the Army to go look theater-wide at our detainee operations...
...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Can I just ask you why wouldn't you read a report like that?
This was a pretty serious matter, and he details, over 53 pages many instances of abuse, torture...humiliation of these prisoners -- it would suggest that perhaps you all didn't take it too seriously.
MYERS: Oh no, we take it very seriously. In fact, I was directly involved in setting up the theater-wide look at this issue.
I don't know about this report, I don't know about the reporting, and I'm not going to comment about it until I have a chance to read it and see what the context is. |
