Senate Committee report blames Bush Administration for detainee torture

In 2004, after the eruption of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, the US Department of Defense dismissed the torture practices as the work “of a few bad apples”. Now a report by a bipartisan Senate committee concludes that the abuses conducted by CIA and US military guards and interrogators were direct results of the Bush Administration’s detention policies and “should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators”. The report, detailing a two-year study by the US Senate Armed Services Committee, has yet to be made public and much of it will remain classified. This being the case, it is not expected to have any impact on the Bush administration, which “continues to delay and in some cases bar members of Congress from gaining access to key legal documents and memos about the detainee program”. [IA]