Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado called on President Barack Obama to "purge" his administration of all who were involved in the CIA's interrogation scandal,
The Hill reported.
In addition to calling for the resignation of CIA Director John Brennan, Udall was deeply critical of the president, urging him to fully purge his administration of those involved in the "enhanced interrogation" procedures that have sparked outrage in Washington and beyond as anti-American and contrary to the nation's values, the Hill noted.
"It’s bad enough to not prosecute these officials but to reward and promote them is incomprehensible,” said Udall while speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “The president needs to purge his administration.”
Udall, in his remarks, offered a glimpse of what has been referred to as the Panetta report, an addition to the CIA investigation released Tuesday. He said if offered conflicting information about what the CIA has said publicly about its interrogation tactics and what that agency actually did, The Hill said.
“Director Brennan and the CIA today are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture,” Udall said. “The CIA is lying. This is not an issue of the past, this is going on today.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee report, five years in the making and released this week, faults the CIA in an investigation that described as "brutal" the torture tactics used on suspects after 9/11,
The New York Times reported.
"Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the CIA's medical staff, some prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary 'rectal feeding' or 'rectal hydration' — a technique that the CIA's chief of interrogations described as a way to exert 'total control over the detainee,' " the Times wrote of the "grisly" tactics.
World reaction has been one of "global condemnation,"
USA Today reported.
Konstantin Dolgov, Russia's human rights ombudsman, Tweeted his scorn, calling out Obama for looking the other way against the perpetrators, USA Today noted.
"The Senate's report proves that there was systematic use of torture in CIA prisons in violation of the international obligations of the U.S. Everyone has known this for a long time. But the Obama administration, having formally banned torture, hasn't lifted a finger to punish those guilty for these egregious human rights abuses," Dolgov wrote. "This has created a further stain on the already stained U.S. reputation in human rights. Let's see what the administration's reaction to the report is."
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