Washington - The former general who investigated abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison is joining an ex-FBI director and others in seeking a presidential commission to investigate the Bush administration's treatment of terror detainees.

    They want President Barack Obama to create a nonpartisan, independent panel that would review policies such as harsh interrogations and "extraordinary renditions," the forced movement of suspected terrorists.

    Obama has appointed a task force to recommend new policies for handling terror suspects who are detained in the future and to decide where they would be housed once the prison at Guantanamo Bay closes.

    But the president has resisted calls for a review of President George W. Bush's record. "I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backward," Obama said Feb. 9.

    The new push comes from a group that includes retired Army Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, former FBI Director William Sessions and former Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering. It was Taguba's internal report on abuse of prisoners by Army military guards at Abu Ghraib that led to various investigations.

    Others involved in the commission effort are Juan E. Mendez, former special adviser to the U.N. secretary-general on the prevention of genocide, and Rev. John H. Thomas, president of the United Church of Christ.

    Also supporting the idea are 18 human rights groups, from Amnesty International to the National Institute of Military Justice.

    The commission would develop a comprehensive report on the detention, treatment and transfer of detainees since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    "We need to understand what happened and how to prevent any illegal actions from taking place in the future," Sessions said in a written statement.

    The chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees also are pushing for wide-ranging investigations into detainee issues, warrantless wiretapping and political hires by the Justice Department during the Bush years.

    More than 700 prisoners have been held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, most for several years. Only a few were charged with a crime.

    The CIA took fewer than 100 prisoners and used harsh interrogation tactics on about one-third of them, including three subjected to waterboarding, a harsh technique that makes the prisoner feel he is in danger of drowning.

    An undisclosed number of the CIA prisoners were part of the rendition program that handed them over to other countries for questioning. Some prisoners claim they were tortured, but proving that in court has proved difficult.

    The commission proposal came the same day a U.S. appeals court blocked a plan to free in the U.S. 17 detainees " - Turkic-speaking Muslims from western China - now held at Guantanamo.

    There is no evidence they plotted or fought against the U.S., so the government has no authority to hold them. But finding a country where they can be released has proved difficult. The U.S. will not release them to their home for fear they will be tortured.