Published: Dec. 7, 2008 at 3:02 PM

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush says the revelation of prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was "a terrible disappointment."

In the latest of a series of interviews he has been giving in the waning days of his presidency in which he has acknowledged certain regrets, Bush told the Saudi Arabian network MBC-TV, in comments released Sunday, that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military jailers had damaged American prestige.

"Abu Ghraib was a terrible disappointment," Bush said. "And admittedly, I wasn't there on the site, but I was the commander-in-chief of a military where these disgraceful acts took place that sent the absolute wrong image about America and our military."
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"Abu Ghraib was a terrible disappointment," Bush said. "And admittedly, I wasn't there on the site, but I was the commander-in-chief of a military where these disgraceful acts took place that sent the absolute wrong image about America and our military."

Posted Dec 13, 2008 @ 12:01 AM

The period when the U.S. government officially condoned harsh and abusive interrogation techniques - low-grade torture, really - at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the CIA's secret prisons was a low one for our standing in the world and our self-image at home.

The waterboarding, sexual humiliation, stress positions, extreme temperatures and attack dogs were not who were are as a people. Now that period has been decisively rejected in a report by the Senate Armed Services Committee, its chairman, Carl Levin, D-Mich., and senior Republican, John McCain of Arizona.

The committee, 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans, found, without dissent, that those techniques "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies and compromised our moral authority." In effect, along with the other drawbacks of abusing detainees, it just didn't work.
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