WASHINGTON (AFP) — President Barack Obama’s administration Monday lifted the veil further on previous “war on terror’’ methods, as it ruled out the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique because it amounted to torture.

Hours after Attorney General Eric Holder repudiated anti-terror methods enacted under former president George W. Bush, the Justice Department released nine internal memos and opinions it said gave legal grounding to the controversial policies.

The documents — the first dating from the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks to the last from the months following the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq — detail how Bush gave himself sole power over terror suspects.

“The power to dispose of the liberty of individuals captured ... remain in the hands of the president alone,’’ said a 2002 opinion written by then-assistant attorney general John Yoo on US methods for transferring suspects.

“Congress can no longer regulate the president’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements,’’ according to another 2003 opinion written for Alberto Gonzales, then counsel for Bush, which detailed prerogatives for military interrogations.

In another potentially explosive opinion, Bush’s administration also gave itself ample space to skirt international law.

The president’s “power to suspend treaties is wholly discretionary,’’ according to a memo intended for John Bellinger, who was then legal advisor to the National Security Council.

Self-applied boundaries for executive power gave the White House ‘’unconstrained discretion to suspend treaty obligations of the United States at any time and for any reason,’’ said Obama’s Justice Department in a statement released alongside the memos.

The house-cleaning move comes as Obama’s administration seeks to distance itself from Bushera policies.

‘’Waterboarding is torture,’’ Holder said earlier Monday in a speech to the Jewish Council of Public Affairs. ‘’My Justice Department will not justify it, will not rationalize it and will not condone it,’’ he said.
‘’The use and sanction of torture is at odds with the history of American jurisprudence and American values. It undermines our ability to pursue justice fairly, and it puts our own brave soldiers in peril should they ever be captured on a foreign battlefield.’’

Holder is currently leading a review of the treatment of terror suspects.

Obama ordered the review as one of his first acts in office, as he also ordered the closing of the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention center, the CIA’s secret prisons abroad and special interrogation authorities for terror detainees.

The president has also vowed ‘’swift and certain justice for captured terrorists.’’