Report: Bush, Not Soldiers, Responsible for Torture

Abuse, torture, murder of prisoners by the US military were due to Bush Administration policy, not the actions of individuals and soldiers, says an official Senate report.

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.

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The report says administration officials publicly blamed the abuses on low-level soldiers but called that ”both unconscionable and false.”