4-28-09, 10:24 am

The Senate Armed Services Committee released its report on its investigation into the torture of US military prisoners earlier this week and prompted further calls for additional investigations to determine who should be held accountable. Though written and approved by the members of the committee in both parties last November, the Department of Defense just gave its approval for the report's declassification this month.

According to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chair of the committee, the report 'represents a condemnation of both the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse, which occurred at places such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan, to low ranking soldiers.' Levin, in a recent statement accompanying the release of the report, noted that the committee rejected Bush administration claims that the abuses of detainees had been unauthorized and could be attributed to a 'few bad apples.'

In fact, the report traced Bush administration efforts to discard the US government's prohibition on torture all the way back to September 16, 2001 when Vice President Dick Cheney suggested turning to the “dark side” in our response to 9/11. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales then called parts of the Geneva Conventions “quaint.” Soon after, President Bush ruled that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees captured in the newly minted 'war on terror.'

Senior officials followed the President and Vice President’s lead, authorizing policies that included 'harsh and abusive interrogation techniques,' the report found. The Senate Armed Services Committee investigation discovered that senior Bush administration officials sought information on and authorized the use of torture during interrogations.

The committee's report also discovered that 'senior officials bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses,' Levin's statement noted. In fact, authorizations of torture by senior Bush administration officials resulted in abuse and conveyed the message that torture was an appropriate treatment for prisoners held by the US military.

Both the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos that gave a legal veneer to torture methods, released earlier, and the Armed Services Committee report showed that Bush administration officials used a military program, known as SERE, designed to help service members resist torture techniques, to actually train interrogators to torture.

The Senate committee's investigation uncovered e-mails warning top leaders and administration officials that the implementation of such a torture training program violated the law and would be an ineffective method of securing information from prisoners. In June 2004, one military psychologist warned: “What is done by SERE instructors is by definition ineffective interrogator conduct… Simply stated, SERE school does not train you on how to interrogate, and things you ‘learn’ there by osmosis about interrogation are probably wrong if copied by interrogators.”

Another top US Army psychologist warned interrogators at Guantanamo as early as 2002 that '[T]he use of physical pressures brings with it a large number of potential negative side effects… When individuals are gradually exposed to increasing levels of discomfort, it is more common for them to resist harder… If individuals are put under enough discomfort, i.e. pain, they will eventually do whatever it takes to stop the pain. This will increase the amount of information they tell the interrogator, but it does not mean the information is accurate. In fact, it usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain.'

More than faulty interrogation techniques, the use of torture violates international and US laws.

Both the OLC memos and the Senate committee investigation discovered that torture techniques approved by the administration were aimed at finding a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, a major Bush administration justification for launching the invasion of Iraq. No such link was ever found by US military or intelligence community interrogators using torture techniques authorized by Bush administration officials. In fact, intelligence agents, using traditional spy work, never found such links either, a point of fact ignored or downplayed by the Bush administration prior to and during the war.

Notably, the other Bush administration rationale for war – Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction – was ever shown to be true either.

Sen. Levin stated that the results of his committee's investigation warranted additional investigation by the US Department of Justice or an independent body 'of whether high level officials who approved and authorized those policies should be held accountable' and 'to recommend what steps, if any, should be taken to establish accountability of high-level officials, including lawyers.'