Senate Report Pins Torture on Rumsfeld

Bipartisan panel, including McCain, concludes detainee abuse not just because of 'a few bad apples'
By Drew Nelles,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 11, 2008 2:48 PM CST
Senate Report Pins Torture on Rumsfeld
Amnesty International stages an anti-torture demonstration through the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland, June, 15, 2008.    (AP Photo)

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top White House officials were responsible for detainee abuse at US military prisons, a bipartisan Senate report finds. After 2 years of hearing testimony and reviewing documents, the study—released by Sens. John McCain and Carl Levin—traces controversial interrogation practices like sleep deprivation directly to high-level Bush administration decisions, the Washington Post reports.

“The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own,” the report states. The report reserves scorn for a 2002 memo signed by President Bush declaring that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, and a Rumsfeld project to compile interrogation techniques based on Chinese torture methods.

(More Donald Rumsfeld stories.)

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