 While the memo was criticized for recommending techniques that were used abusively at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and elsewhere, it did not apply to interrogators working anywhere outside Guantanamo Bay.But, on March 14, 2003, five days before the United States began the invasion of Iraq, John Yoo of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel issued a legal opinion/memo to Haynes, concluding that federal laws related to the use of torture of prisoners and suspects did not apply to interrogations overseas.In August 2004, the Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations, which was convened in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal that broke in April 2004, issued a report claiming that the methods Haynes recommended were "strictly limited for use at Guantanamo" and that officers there "used those...techniques with only two detainees, gaining important and time sensitive information in the process."