Report: US resorted to torture after Sept. 11, 2001

Associated Press

NEW YORK

An independent review of the U.S. government’s anti-terrorism response after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reported Tuesday that it is “indisputable” the United States engaged in torture and the George W. Bush administration bears responsibility.

The report by the Constitution Project, a nonpartisan Washington-based think-tank, is an ambitious review of the Bush administration’s approach to the problems of holding and interrogating detainees after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The report says brutality has occurred in war before, “But there is no evidence there had ever before been the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after September 11, directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, John Bolton, called the report “completely divorced from reality.”