User talk:Xavexgoem/sandbox

April 23, 2009

Yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report containing previously-unreleased memos concluding that CIA and DoD officials were already exploring the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques in early 2002, eight months before Justice Department lawyers approved their use. Also released yesterday was a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee confirming that Bush administration officials, including Condoleeza Rice and John Ashcroft, had backed such tactics in secret meetings through June 2002. In the days following Rice's approval, the Justice Department had given the legal rationale for the use of waterboarding.

The evidence undermines claims made by several Bush-era officials that the events leaked from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay were the result of "bad apples" from the bottom of both the CIA and the Pentagon's command structure. Says Carl Levin, chair of the intelligence committee: "The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots."