Opposing passage of Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) amendment prohibiting the use of torture during interrogations, a December 13 Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that "numerous" probes into the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq concluded that the alleged abuses there "had nothing to do with interrogations." In fact, Senate and military probes concluded the opposite. The editorial also claimed that the so-called "torture memos," a series of memoranda written by Bush administration lawyers and officials that narrowed the definition of torture and sought to loosen constraints on interrogators, never sanctioned "specific interrogation techniques"; however at least one memo, which went out under the letterhead of the Secretary of Defense, sanctioned the use of 24 interrogation techniques, including sleep and dietary "adjustments," as well as a technique called "Fear Up Harsh," which involved "[s]ignificantly increasing the fear level in a detainee."
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