The so-called CIA torture report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday was slammed by many Republicans, but former Vietnam prisoner of war Sen. John McCain praised the move for shedding light on the secretive practices.
"The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless," the Arizona Republican said from the Senate floor the same day.
McCain said that, not only did the techniques detailed in the report often provide useless or even inaccurate information, but also "stained our national honor."
"Our enemies act without conscience," he said. "We must not. We need not risk our national honor to prevail in this or any war."
USA Today reported that the documents provide details of CIA detainees being subjected to sleep deprivation, waterboarding, loud music, and "rectal feeding."
In one 2002 instance, a partially nude detainee died of hypothermia while chained to the floor. At the same facility, detainees with broken feet and/or legs were forced to stand.
After the interrogations, the report explains that the CIA "provided inaccurate information to the White House, Congress, the Justice Department, the CIA inspector general, the media, and the American public."
Unlike Sen. McCain, the committee's Republican minority took issue with the report, saying the investigation that generated it failed to interview key witnesses within the CIA.
"With respect to the standard of objectivity, we were disappointed to find that the updated Study still contains evidence of strongly held biases," they wrote in the report.
On Tuesday afternoon, former CIA Directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss, and Michael V. Hayden, and former CIA Deputy Directors John E. McLaughlin, Albert M. Calland, and Stephen R. Kappes slammed the report in an
editorial for The Wall Street Journal.
The report's "claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate," they wrote.
"The interrogation program formed an essential part of the foundation from which the CIA and the U.S. military mounted the bin Laden operation."
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