RT @phrTweets: Nature: Medics performed '#interrogation research' #CIA #torture #ethics #law

Bradbury Memo methods list

April 22, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- The Senate Armed Services Committee has just released an exhaustive review of torture under the Bush administration that, among other revelations, torpedoes the notion that the administration only chose torture as a last resort. Bush officials have long argued that they turned to coercive interrogations in 2002 only after captured al-Qaida suspects wouldn't talk, but the report shows the administration set the wheels in motion soon after 9/11. The Bush White House began planning for torture in December 2001, set up a program to develop the interrogation techniques by the next month, and the military and the CIA began training interrogators in coercive practices in early 2002, before they had any high-value al-Qaida suspects or any trouble eliciting information from detainees.

force detainees at Guantánamo Bay to stand for hours on end, in order to soften them up and make them talk to U.S. interrogators, he made a joke about it. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," the then-defense secretary wrote on Dec. 2, 2002, at the bottom of a memo authorizing military officials to use extreme techniques against prisoners. "Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

WASHINGTON — A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration.

The report on abuse of captured terrorist suspects that the Senate Armed Services Committee completed last November has now been declassified. All 263 pages with light redacting can be read on-line here. (Warning: pdf.)

Today we’re releasing the declassified report [PDF] of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s investigation into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The report was approved by the Committee on November 20, 2008, and has, in the intervening period, been under review at the Department of Defense for declassification.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden was fond of saying that when it came to handling high value terror suspects, he would play in fair territory, but with "chalk dust on my cleats." Four legal memos released last week by the Obama Administration make it clear that the referee role in CIA interrogations was played by its medical and psychological personnel.