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Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Today’s follow-up: Former Army vice chief of staff says there was no pressure from Rumsfeld’s goons to retire Taguba

I caught up with retired Gen. Richard Cody on Monday morning and asked him if Douglas Feith or another Rumsfeld follower had pressured the Army to retire Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba after Taguba filed his report on abuses and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison. Absolutely not, Cody said. "The reason Tony didn’t go any ...

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STEPHEN JAFFE/AFP/Getty Images
STEPHEN JAFFE/AFP/Getty Images
STEPHEN JAFFE/AFP/Getty Images

I caught up with retired Gen. Richard Cody on Monday morning and asked him if Douglas Feith or another Rumsfeld follower had pressured the Army to retire Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba after Taguba filed his report on abuses and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison.

I caught up with retired Gen. Richard Cody on Monday morning and asked him if Douglas Feith or another Rumsfeld follower had pressured the Army to retire Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba after Taguba filed his report on abuses and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Absolutely not, Cody said. "The reason Tony didn’t go any farther, and retired as a two-star general, was that it was his time," he said. Despite Taguba’s suspicions, there was no pressure from the Rumsfeld crowd, he added. (This rings true to me — I once attended a lecture for new Army generals that informed them that all their careers would end with a phone call telling them it was their time to retire.)  

As for the Taguba report itself, Cody added, "Tony did a pretty damn good job, I thought. I was proud of him. . . He spoke truth to power."

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1
Tags: Corruption, Human Rights, Iraq, Liberalism, Middle East and North Africa, Military, North America, Strategic Intelligence

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