“This is the first time in our history that torture has been an official policy, and that has been disastrous,” said retired Brig. Gen. David Irvine. “Our standing in the world has never been lower, and it's been because of our hypocrisy on that issue as well as others.”

As an instructor for the Sixth Army Intelligence School, Irvine said he trained more than 700 soldiers and sailors in interrogation techniques.

Irvine joined William Howard Taft IV, who was an adviser to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and two religious leaders to urge House and Senate staff to back a proposal by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would limit interrogation practices to those permitted in the Army Field Manual.

“I can just tell you flat-out that Army doctrine and policy for decades has been a bright line prohibition on the use of torture and coercion and it repeats itself again and again in the Army Field Manual,” Irvine said.

The Senate approved the McCain amendment - with both Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett voting for it - but it was not included in the House bill. However, Bloomberg news service, citing anonymous sources, reported Wednesday that negotiators had agreed to keep the McCain amendment in the final version of the bill.

Irvine's Washington trip also came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while visiting European leaders, made the most definitive statements to date from the Bush administration denouncing torture.

At a news conference Wednesday with Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, Rice said that “As a matter of U.S. policy,” the United Nations Convention Against Torture "extends to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the U.S. or outside the U.S."

The problem with the administration's earlier statements on torture, Irvine said, is that “No one knows precisely what kind of definition she or anyone in the administration might have been using all along.”

“They have played so many word games with the world over this stuff, that, at this point in time, when they say, 'We don't torture,' it's hard to know what that means,” he said.

A 2002 memo on torture, written by Justice Department attorney Jay Bybee, a graduate of Brigham Young University, said that practices not causing pain so severe as to result in “significant organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, or death” would not be prohibited.

Under such a scenario, Irvine said, an interrogator could break several fingers of a suspect if he refused to comply. Most people would consider that torture, and it goes beyond the treaties the United States has signed - but it would not cause organ failure or death.

“Torture is a very effective way of extracting confessions," Irvine said. "Whether it's an effective way of extracting truth is something else."