The Senate Armed Services Committee Report on Treating of Detainees in December 2008

Senator Carl Levin and Senator John McCain conducted an investigation into the treating of detainees at Abu Ghraib and wrote a report of what they found in December 2008. In the report, Levin and McCain dismissed all claims that the defense department had nothing to do with the torture, and stated that the policies were in fact approved by Rumsfeld and other top officials. The report found that Rumsfeld felt that "physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees." Senior officials allowed harsh techniques. The report also talks about the influence of SERE on the military for the treatment of detainees. SERE is a program that teaches soldiers in the US military to be able to resist giving information during harsh interrogations in the event of being captured. SERE uses many techniques that were used in Abu Ghraib, but did not teach the soldiers how to perform the techniques, only how to resist them. Although the report is still mostly classified, what we can read shows evidence that top officials are partly or primarily responsible for the torture inflicted at Abu Ghraib.