Former President George W. Bush's torture enablers off hook

~

The White House on Sunday said that Bush administration policymakers would get a pass along with the CIA agents who waterboarded terrorists.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said the new administration would not use the courts to go after Justice Department and White House officials involved in devising policy outlined in so-called "torture memos" under former President George W. Bush.


Last week, President Obama said CIA agents who used "enhanced interrogation techniques" were off the hook and Emmanuel said policymakers "should not be prosecuted either and that's not the place that we go."

"What people need to know, this practice and technique, we don't use anymore. He [Obama] banned it," Emanuel said on ABC's "This Week."

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden charged that techniques used on top Al Qaeda terrorists "made us safer," and public release of the memos endangered national security.

"I think that teaching our enemies our outer limits, by taking techniques off the table, we have made it more difficult in a whole host of circumstances I can imagine, more difficult for CIA officers to defend the nation," Hayden said on "Fox News Sunday."

~