Report: Detainee Abuse Was Fault Of Leaders

[livvy]

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, pray before dawn in the Camp 4 detention facility. A report from the Senate Armed Services Committee concludes that abuses of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Gitmo were wrongly blamed on a few troops who were not obeying orders.


Report: Detainee Abuse Was Fault Of Leaders

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Dec 12, 2008 19:27:08 EST

A new report about treatment of detainees in U.S. custody suggests Bush administration officials should have listened to the military’s judge advocates who warned against converting a survival school training regime into a policy for aggressive interrogation.

The report from the Senate Armed Services Committee, approved Nov. 21 but not released until Dec. 11, concludes that abuses — interrogation techniques that appear to have crossed the line into torture or inhumane conduct — were wrongly blamed on a few troops who were not obeying orders.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee chairman, said in a statement that the blame falls on military leaders. Abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base and other locations “cannot be chalked up to the activities of a few bad apples,” he said.

“Attempts by senior officials to portray that to be the case while shrugging off any responsibility for abuses are both unconscionable and false,” Levin said. “Our investigation is an effort to set the record straight.”

Harsh treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, authorized in late 2002, has “damaged both America’s standing and our security,” Levin said. “America needs to own up to its mistakes so that we can rebuild some of the good will that we have lost.”

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