ARAB-US RELATIONS - June 22 - Use Of Dogs In Interrogations.

Seeking to contain a growing scandal over prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House takes the unusual step of releasing a trove of documents that it says reflect thorough and agonising policy deliberations over how to treat detainees in the war on terror. It says the US has for a period approved the use of dogs in the interrogation of prisoners which was later withdrawn and it denies ever sanctioning torture. Bush from the Oval Office says: "I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture". White House lawyers concede that some legal theories in the documents could be construed as "controversial". However, they say Pres Bush took a more cautious path in making his final determinations, and that the materials supported the administration's contention that its policies were within international law. The document release reflects the damage the prisoner abuse scandal has done to the country's image abroad and to Bush's re-election campaign. But some of the materials could be damaging. One Pentagon memo revealed that Rumsfeld, in December 2002 approved stripping prisoners and the use of dogs for interrogations in Guantanamo Bay - techniques that later appeared to emerge at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those and other methods were not included in a later list of approved interrogation guidelines amid concerns from military lawyers. Some of the documents released on June 22 had previously emerged in leaked form and were the basis for allegations that the administration had set policies that sanctioned torture. Bush's chief legal counsel Alberto Gonzales, said that some of the materials were theoretical and had been taken out of context. Seeking to distance the administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists from the acts of torture US troops later committed in Iraq, Gonzales said: "As for the incidents at Abu Ghraib, they were not authorised and are not a result of any of the policies in these documents". Pentagon's General Counsel William Haynes, said the release of the documents could damage US efforts in the war on terror because it would provide enemies with new information about US interrogation techniques. But Haynes said those concerns were ultimately outweighed by the need to correct inaccurate information about the administration's policies. The most important documents to emerge include a memorandum from Pres Bush on Feb 7, 2002 outlining the handling of detainees in the war on terror. The document was Bush's only formal directive on the issue. While it concluded that Al-Qaeda or Taliban officials were exempt from the Geneva convention, it also stated that they should be treated "humanely".