It is "indisputable" that the United States engaged in torture after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and top officials are ultimately to blame, says an independent review released Tuesday. The lengthy, bipartisan report led by two former lawmakers found intelligence officers and military forces practiced torture, as well as "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq, the US-run prison at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, in violation of US and international law.

By Matt Spetalnick and Jane Sutton WASHINGTON/MIAMI (Reuters) - An independent task force issued a damning review of Bush-era interrogation practices on Tuesday, saying the highest U.S. officials bore ultimate responsibility for the "indisputable" use of torture, and it urged President Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo detention camp by the end of 2014.

A federal judge has rejected an emergency appeal by a Guantanamo inmate on a hunger strike who claims he received rationed drinking water and was exposed to extremely cold temperatures. US District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled Monday he did not have the jurisdiction to make a determination in the matter and rejected the motion by Musaab al-Madhwani who has been held at the US military prison in Cuba for eleven years. The detainee had filed an emergency motion for relief demanding his jailers provide him with drinking water and clothes that were warm enough.

By Jane Sutton MIAMI (Reuters) - The indefinite detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo detention camp is "abhorrent and intolerable" and should end by the time U.S. troops leave Afghanistan next year, an independent U.S. task force said in a report released on Tuesday. The Constitution Project's task force, which included two retired U.S. generals, urged President Barack Obama to declare the war over when U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of 2014.