Bush/ Cheney/ Rumsfeld Torture Approval Hurt US Reputation, Intel gathering

A new bipartisan report from the Senate Armed Services Committee states that approval of torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib came from the very highest levels of government.



Prisoner abuse "was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own" but came from former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other top officials, who "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees."

Newsweek reports that the administration approved waterboarding on suspected al Qaeda detainees after receiving reports from government psychologists that it was "100 percent effective" in breaking military personnel. In contrast, former interrogator Matthew Alexander recently stated, "When I was in Iraq, the few times that I saw people use harsh methods, it was always counterproductive."

The report concludes that the use of waterboarding "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies and compromised our moral authority."