Council on American-Islamic Relations official Robert McCaw tells Newsmax that whoever authorized the torture program detailed in the report released by Senate Democrats ought to be "held accountable."
"We want to see where torture was authorized and who it was authorized by," McCaw told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on
Newsmax TV Thursday.
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"When you look at the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's use of torture, it should just prompt accountability and changes in our law and our government policies," he explained.
"It clearly demonstrates the need that whoever approved it and whoever carried out this campaign of torture that they should be held accountable," he said.
"Just because the Justice Department under the Bush administration said torture was legal — torture is not legal, torture is torture, period, it's not an American value," he added.
The CIA torture report was released Tuesday, saying that the intelligence agency's interrogation tactics were more brutal and not as effective as the CIA claimed they were to Congress and the George W. Bush administration.
In response to the report,
CAIR released a statement saying "strong legal and policy measures need to be enacted in order to prevent such illegal actions being taken during any future security crisis."
Three former CIA directors, George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, came to the defense of the CIA interrogation tactics in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, saying that the program was "invaluable" and criticizing the Senate report for not being more "serious and balanced."
But CAIR said in its statement that "we should not be questioning whether or not it worked, but why we ever used such brutal and illegal interrogation techniques."
McCaw told Newsmax that "I want to know whether Americans engaged in torture, period."
"If it was used on Muslim Americans, if it was used on non-Muslims, foreign nationals, whoever — it's not an American value to engage in torture, and we shouldn't be doing it," he explained.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized the report Wednesday saying that it's not true that the CIA kept its interrogation tactics from former President George W. Bush and that the claim that "the agency was operating on a rogue basis . . . is just a flat-out lie."
"Isn't it convenient that Dick Cheney is defending his administration and that the Department of Justice right now wouldn't reopen an inquiry?" McCaw said.
"Governments always have troubled indicting themselves," he contends.
"Is it right for America to break the rules, to break the laws, American laws? No, it is not right," he added.
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