In US stand on torture, more trials to come

STILL, questions endure about who ultimately bears responsibility for the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib: Is it the soldiers who committed the acts or senior officers who failed to prevent them?

Many experts say the mistreatment occurred in tandem with an increasingly tolerant US interrogation policy. The "gloves off" approach began in Afghanistan, after US officials created new rules designed to soften up prisoners to ferret out crucial information in the war on terror. Those practices carried over to the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, officials and experts say, and were later used in Iraq.

"There's been so much of this in so many places that you have to look at what was being said and done at the top to have affected this behavior," says Patrick Lang, former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

At the time, the government's policy on what constituted torture was outlined in an August 2002 memo. Interrogators were allowed to use pain up to the "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death."

Under its new policy, issued in late December, the Bush administration backed off that standard somewhat, stating: "We conclude that under some circumstances 'severe physical suffering' may constitute torture even if it does not involve 'severe physical pain.' "

Yet, overall, the policy still remains ambiguous. Supporters say that is appropriate, even necessary. If the US had someone in custody who knew about an imminent terrorist attack - say, one involving a nuclear device - it would want to use aggressive tactics to get that information out of him.

But critics think the new policy still gives too much leeway to interrogators. "There are two issues that are bothersome to people here," says Hurst Hannun, a human rights expert at Tufts University's Fletcher School in Medford, Mass. "One is the administration's early suggestion that torture might have been OK. The second is that the administration seems to be trying to leave itself total discretion to take what actions it needs when confronted with terrorists."

Another longstanding issue is whether harsh tactics work. In the FBI documents released by the ACLU, federal agents complain that military interrogators at Guantánamo were aggressive: They poked lit cigarettes in detainees' ears, deprived them of food and sleep, and used dogs, among other cruel and sexually humiliating tactics. But besides an agency prohibition against using such tactics, FBI agents said they generally aren't effective in eliciting information.

Yet most disturbing to critics are the moral issues and questions of accountability. "Theses documents ultimately raise the same questions that arise from the Graner trial," says Amrit Singh, an ACLU lawyer. "What was the responsibility of policymakers and those in the military chain of command in authorizing the abuse? We still don't know."

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