A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration.

The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by the military, not those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas. It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military facilities.

The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq — stripping detainees, placing them in “stress positions” or depriving them of sleep — originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or SERE, intended to train American troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations.

According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising “to get ‘tougher’ with detainee interrogations.” Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques.

And from the Guardian:

A Senate inquiry published today directly implicates senior members of the Bush administration in the extensive use of harsh interrogation methods against al-Qaida suspects and other prisoners round the world.

The 232-page report, the most detailed investigation yet into the background of torture, undercuts the claim of the then deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was the work of "a few bad apples".

The report says: "The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees."

The report, the result of an 18-month inquiry, reveals the administration rejected advice from various branches of the armed services against using more aggressive techniques. The military questioned both the morality and the reliability of information gained.

The report discloses that waterboarding and other techniques used were based on a faulty premise. The methods were lifted from a military programme known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) but the armed forces pointed out that this was intended to train troops in resisting torture rather than establishing whether these were useful interrogation methods

The report says that SERE instructors trained CIA and other military personnel early in 2002 on the use of harsher interrogation techniques but warned that information obtained might be unreliable.

Labels: rumsfeld, torture

Belatedly complying with a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU, the Obama administration has release four memos from the Bush administration giving the CIA permission to use certain torture techniques.

President Obama banned the use of these methods in his first week in office. That's the good news. But so far he has shown no incliniation to bring criminal prosecutions against the officials who wrote the memos or the senior employees at the CIA who ordered agents to use torture. The message is clear. Publicly, the president affirms torture is against the law, but he won't prosecute anyone for breaking that law. This sets a dangerous precedent and will embolden those in the CIA and the military who believe they are above the law.

You can tell the president what you think about this issue at www.whitehouse.gov

BBC News: CIA 'amnesty' dismays campaigners

Labels: obama, torture

Same as the old boss.

The Obama administration is again invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration's wiretapping program, this time against a lawsuit by AT&T customers who claim federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records.

Instead of change we can believe in, we're getting more of the same.

Labels: nochange, obama, secrecy