by TChris

Documents released by the Bush administration concerning the interrogation of detainees raise more questions than they answer, says Human Rights Watch.

The released documents stop in April 2003 and do not cover practices at Abu Ghraib and other military prisons in Iraq, Human Rights Watch said. Even so, they show that in December, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved the use of techniques, such as the use of guard dogs to instill fear in detainees, stripping detainees nude, and the use of painful stress positions, that violate the law. Rumsfeld later rescinded his approval of these techniques on Guantanamo detainees, yet they later featured prominently in the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Human Rights Watch calls for "an independent investigation, not a selective self-investigation." In addition, it wants the administration to release everything, "including the 2003 memoranda from Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq authorizing coercive interrogation techniques there," and documents relating to CIA interrogation practices.