Liberals Press White House to Take Action on Torture Report

The political left seems unwilling to let go the unseemly details of the Congressional report on torture, even as the White House continues to distance itself in an effort to keep it from gaining traction in headlines, Politico reports.

After U.S. Sen. Mark Udall called for CIA Director John Brennan's resignation and urged the Obama administration to "purge" its ranks, the drumbeat from liberal interests to do something more continues. The American Civil Liberties Union has publicly called for prosecutions and other human rights groups are decrying the conduct of U.S. interrogators, even as the White House is stepping back and offering little guidance to Democrats on talking points, Politico noted.

“The United States is a major player in the international arena, and there’s an accountability component, and that’s what they should be saying to their allies. If you make a mistake, you ought to own up to it,” Sarah Margon, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, told Politico. “What do we do when international laws are violated? We are a nation of laws.”

Added Chris Andrews, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, to Politico: “The debate’s not going to end. It’s just getting going.”

Despite the outcry, the White House continues to stand by Brennan, The New York Times noted, even as Udall charged that "the CIA is lying." Brennan has denied those allegations, putting Obama "between a rock and a hard place," Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at the Fordham University School of Law, told the Times.

"The intelligence agency has become the lead agency in national security, and therefore he’s beholden to it, and there’s no getting around that. It’s much bigger than before 9/11. It’s not just about Brennan," Greenberg said.

Despite the outcry, prosecutions and deeper reforms seem unlikely, The Los Angeles Times wrote, noting the White House had "dodged" questions about what Obama thought of the CIA report's findings.

Even Richard Burr, the North Carolina senator who will become head of the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, says he's not much interested in reviewing the report's findings, the Times noted.

"We're going to focus on real-time oversight," Burr told the Times. "We're not going to be looking back a decade trying to dredge up things."

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