Getting Away with Torture

Human Rights Watch
July 12, 2011

Summary

George Tenet asked if he had permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.…

“Damn right,” I said. — Former President George W. Bush, 2010[1]

There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account. — Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, June 2008[2]

Should former US President George W. Bush be investigated for authorizing “waterboarding” and other abuses against detainees that the United States and scores of other countries have long recognized as torture? Should high-ranking US officials who authorized enforced disappearances of detainees and the transfer of others to countries where they were likely to be tortured be held accountable for their actions?

In 2005, Human Rights Watch’s Getting Away with Torture? presented substantial evidence warranting criminal investigations of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet, as well as Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top US commander in Iraq, and Gen. Geoffrey Miller, former commander of the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

(More here.)