‘Bush knew about CIA’s suspects torture’

WASHINGTON. — President George W. Bush was fully aware of and an “integral part” of the CIA’s torture of terror suspects, his vice-president Dick Cheney said on Wednesday.The long-awaited US Senate report released on Tuesday on the programme of harsh treatment and torture of detainees said Bush only learned details of it in 2006, four years after it started in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Detainees were beaten, water-boarded – some of them dozens of times – and humiliated through the painful use of medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” and “rectal rehydration”, the report said.

Speaking to Fox News, Cheney denied Bush was kept out of the loop. He said the then-president “was in fact an integral part of the programme and he had to approve it”.

Asked if Bush knew specific details of how specific interrogations were being conducted, Cheney was more vague, saying: “We did discuss the techniques. There was no effort on our part to keep him from that.” — AFP.