WASHINGTON: A Senate report released late Thursday concluded that decisions by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were a “direct cause” of widespread detainee abuses, and that top Bush administration officials were to blame for creating a legal and moral climate that contributed to inhumane treatment.
Endorsed by both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the report is the most forceful denunciation to date of the role that Rumsfeld and other top officials played in the prisoner abuse scandals of the past five years. After an 18-month investigation, the report described the Rumsfeld order as “a direct cause for detainee abuse” at Guantanamo Bay, and concluded that it “influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques, including military working dogs, forced nudity, and stress positions,” that began in Guantanamo, and spread to Afghanistan and Iraq.
The report also criticized the president, although less harshly. In particular, it cited a presidential memorandum on Feb. 7, 2002, that denied detainees captured in Afghanistan the protections of the Geneva Convention, which bans abusive treatment of prisoners of war.
The report, released by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., said that Pentagon officials later tried to create a false impression that the policies were unrelated to acts of detainee abuse committed by members of the military.
The Bush administration insisted the abuses were the result of a few “bad apples” and that those responsible would be held accountable. The committee found neither those statements to be true.
“The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own,” the document concluded. Instead, it said, a series of high-level decisions in the Bush administration “conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in US military custody.”
“Attempts by senior officials to portray that to be the case while shrugging off any responsibility are both unconscionable and false,” said Levin.
The Senate report concluded that water-boarding — the process of repeatedly suffocating restrained detainees with drenched towels — and other harsh interrogation techniques were discussed by top members of the National Security Council and other senior administration officials inside the White House, and that some officials had expressed strong concerns about the legality of the methods.
But the techniques were ultimately given the green light, based on government assessments that showed such methods were quick and effective in breaking down the resistance of US military officers who were subjected to them in so-called Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) classes. The techniques were never intended to be used by US interrogators against their detainees. But in February 2002, Bush determined that the Geneva Conventions should not apply to terror suspects.
Following that ruling, techniques used in SERE training were applied against US detainees, and Rumsfeld gave his approval in December. But the report concluded that the use of these techniques against Al-Qaeda detainees “damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies and compromised our moral authority.”
