Salon's Joe Conason, working from documents obtained under FOIA by the ACLU, reports that torture techniques at Guantánamo were explicitly approved at the top:
[A]n internal FBI memo indicates that the directive to discard traditional restraints came from the very highest civilian official in the Pentagon: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.That revealing memo is dated May 10, 2004, a time when the Abu Ghraib revelations were humiliating the United States before the entire world. An e-mail, it is addressed to FBI counterterrorism officer Thomas J. Harrington from an agent whose name is redacted (along with much else), and its subject is captioned "Instructions to GTMO [Guantánamo] Interrogators." The memo's obvious purpose is to set down, for the record, the FBI's opposition to the Pentagon's use of coercive and abusive methods when questioning the Guantánamo detainees. It describes the FBI's fundamental disagreement over interrogation tactics with Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Gen. Michael Dunlavey, then the military commanders at Guantánamo Bay.
"I will have to do some digging into old files," the unnamed author begins. "We did advise each supervisor that went to GTMO to stay in line with Bureau policy and not deviate from that ... I went to GTMO ... We had also met with Generals Dunlevy & Miller explaining our position (Law Enforcement Techniques) vs. DoD [Department of Defense]. Both agreed the Bureau has their way of doing business and DoD has their marching orders from the SecDef [Secretary of Defense]. Although the two techniques [of interrogation] differed drastically, both Generals believed they had a job to accomplish."
This is indirect evidence, so it's not exactly a smoking gun. But many other pieces of evidence point to our government's adoption of torture as official policy: the "Geneva Convention protections are quaint and obsolete" memo from Attorney-General-nominee Alberto Gonzalez; the consistency of techniques of torture in various places; the military intelligence officer in Abu Ghraib who used a photo of the naked Iraqis as his screensaver. This document just places the trail of responsibility closer to the top of the government.
I suspect it won't be long before something emerges to show that President Bush himself endorsed the torture. Perhaps not, however; he may be too clever to leave a paper trail on something like this. Nevertheless, Rumsfeld works for him, and if Bush does nothing to stop the policy even after the Abu Ghraib pictures and many Red Cross reports, that amounts to acceptance.
UPDATE 12:15pm PST: Not only has Bush not distanced himself from Rumsfeld in the wake of the latter's policy of torture and hopeless mismanagement of basic supplies for the military, he's giving Rumsfeld a new vote of confidence:
"Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a great job leading our efforts at the Department of Defense to win the war on terrorism and to help bring about a free and peaceful Iraq, and the president is focused on working closely with him on those matters," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
I'm not even sure what to say.