Senate probe blames top Bush officials for detainee abuses

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/57631.html

By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday singled out former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, and other top aides for approving inhumane interrogation techniques that were used on detainees at Guantanamo, sites in Afghanistan and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

U.S. abuses against detainees led to attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, according to testimony by the former general counsel of the Navy, Alberto Mora. "There are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively, the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo," Mora testified.

The long awaited report said the techniques used were "based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions" from captured American prisoners and adapted for use against U.S. detainees.

Instructors from the Pentagon agency that trains soldiers in resisting such treatment were sent to Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq to assist in adopting of the methods, it said.

The abusive techniques — water boarding, nudity, stress positions, exploiting phobias, and treating detainees "like animals" — were "at odds with the commitment to humane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody" and inconsistent with the goal of collecting accurate information, the report concluded.

It traced the abusive practices to President George W. Bush's written determination in February 2002 that the 1949 Geneva Conventions didn't apply to suspected al Qaida and Taliban detainees. Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, and other Cabinet officers took part in meetings where specific interrogation techniques were discussed, the report said.

The report, which took 18 months to compile, said that Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay "was a direct cause of detainee abuse there." His approval of a memo from Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes "contributed to the use of abusive techniques," including using military dogs, forced nudity and stress positions in Afghanistan and Iraq, it said.

Myers' decision to cut short a legal and policy review of the techniques "undermined the military's review process," the report said. Haynes' effort to cut short the legal and policy review was "inappropriate and undermined the military's review process," it said.

Others criticized included:

Col. Randy Moulton, the commander of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which trains soldiers to resist abusive interrogations. It said Moulton, "who had no experience in detainee interrogations," had authorized instructors in the Army's "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape" or SERE program to actively participate in interrogations using abusive tactics. This "was a serious failure in leadership that led to the abuse of detainees" in U.S. custody.

According to an executive summary of the report, the commander at Guantanamo, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who introduced the techniques, ignored warnings from Pentagon and FBI investigators that the techniques were "potentially unlawful" and that their use would strengthen detainee resistance. Miller, it said, also helped bring harsh interrogation methods to Iraq during visits in August and September 2003.

The report also charged Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq, with a "serious error in judgment" for approving the use of military working dogs and stress positions, which it said were "a direct cause of detainee abuse in Iraq."

It's not clear whether the committee's report and recommendations will lead to legal proceedings against any of the officials named or whether the incoming Obama administration will pursue allegations of possible crimes committed during the administration's war on terror.