Former President George W. Bush and President Obama.(Photo: LM Otero, AP)
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Supporters of two very different presidents — Barack Obama and George W. Bush — are bracing for battle over Tuesday's report on what Obama backers call "torture" and what Bush backers call "enhanced interrogation techniques."
While Obama and aides support release of the report as to way to prevent future abuses, some Bush administration officials call it partisan second-guessing of techniques that proved necessary during the war on terrorism.
"What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation and the agency was way out of bounds and then they lied about it," former vice president Dick Cheney told The New York Times . "I think that's all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program."
Current administration officials said Obama supports release of the report.
"The president, on his first or second day in office, took the steps using executive action to put an end to the tactics that are described in the report," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "The president believes that, on principle, it's important to release that report so that people around the world and people here at home understand exactly what transpired."
The dispute between Obama and Bush officials revolves around the legality of the interrogation programs and whether they yielded valuable intelligence as the U.S. raced to block terrorism in the years following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Cheney and other Bush administration officials say the programs yielded actionable intelligence that helped uncover possible terrorist plots.
Congressional Democrats say the report shows that tactics like waterboarding yielded nothing that could not have been obtained by other means.
The two sides agree on one thing: Release of the Senate report, detailing some of the less savory methods used to extract testimony from terrorism suspects, could lead to violent, anti-American protests in some countries.
Earnest said the Obama administration "has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place at U.S. facilities around the globe."
Former president George W. Bush told CNN's State of the Union in a recent interview that while he has not seen the report, he defends the CIA's actions as officials sought to learn the plans of the al-Qaeda terrorist group.
"We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf," Bush said. "These are patriots, and whatever the report says — if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off-base. I knew the directors, I knew the deputy directors, I knew a lot of the operators. These are good people, really good people, and we're lucky as a nation to have them."
Obama expressed support for a report during an Aug. 1 news conference, saying the nation "did some things that were wrong" in the aftermath of 9/11.
"We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks," Obama said. "We did some things that were contrary to our values."
Seeking to walk a fine line, Obama said it's important to remember the "enormous pressure" that law enforcement officials were under after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"It's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had," Obama said. "And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots — but having said all that, we did some things that were wrong."
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