U.S. commanders approved brutal techniques in interrogation- paper

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A newly declassified Congressional report revealed that the U.S. military’s use of brutal interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved by senior officials of the Bush administration, The New York Times said on Wednesday. “The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by the military, not those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas. It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military facilities,” according to the newspaper. “The 232-page report, the product of an 18-month inquiry, was approved on Nov. 20 by the Senate Armed Services Committee, but has since been under Pentagon review for declassification. Some of the findings were made public in a Dec. 12 article in The New York Times; a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed the report at the time as ‘unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation’.” “The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq — stripping detainees, placing them in ‘stress positions’ or depriving them of sleep — originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or SERE, intended to train American troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations.” “The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as ‘an analogy and basis for use of these techniques,’ and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan ‘that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim’.” “Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy ‘and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command.’ This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, ‘sleep management’ and military dogs to exploit detainees’ fears, the report said.” SS (S) 1