US senator ties harsh interrogations to top Bush officials

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Harsh interrogation techniques used at US "war-on-terror" prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay were sanctioned by top US government officials well before they were put into practice, a top US senator alleged Tuesday.

In a hearing, Carl Levin, the Democratic head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, tied US interrogation policies -- which critics say have included torture -- to Donald Rumsfeld, the powerful defense secretary from 2001 to 2006, and other top officials in President George W. Bush's administration.

Counter to the Bush administration's argument that mistreatment at the prisons arose from simply a handful of out-of-control military jailers, or a "few bad apples," Levin said a high-level debate raged in the US defense and...