Report says Rumsfeld allowed torture

Big News Network.com
Thursday 11th December, 2008

A US report, following a two year investigation, has declared former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials allowed the use of torture on foreign detainees.

The report says Rumsfeld "redefined the law" to allow the abuse of detainees in US custody.

The authors of the report, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator John McCain, said the abuse could not simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own.

They said: "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

Even though the Bush administration had suggested that the use of torture techniques came from interrogators who had requested tougher methods for al-Qaeda and Taliban members, the report concluded that the use of torture originated from a February 2007 memo from President Bush that said the Geneva Convention did not apply to non-government fighters.