In his first televised remarks on the torture report, President Obama stuck to his line of condemning past actions without taking sides in the debate over whether there was a cover-up for which people should be held accountable.
“In the aftermath of 9/11, in the midst of a national trauma and uncertainty about whether these attacks were going to repeat themselves … what’s clear is that theCIA set up something very fast without a lot of forethought,” he told Telemundo.
“The lines of accountability that needed to be set up weren’t always in place and some of these techniques that were described were not only wrong but were counterproductive.”
Obama said the methods employed by the CIA were flawed, although he stopped short of claiming with the Senate report that no useful intelligence was gathered that could not have been obtained elsewhere.
“We know that oftentimes when someone is being subjected to these kinds of techniques they are willing to say anything to alleviate the pain and distress they are feeling. We have got better ways of doing things,” Obama added in the interview.
He also said it was impossible to imagine the pressures after 9/11 but that “does not excuse all of us from looking squarely at what happened and make sure that it doesn’t happen again”.
“It’s important for us not to paint any broad-brush [picture] about all the incredible dedicated professionals in our intelligence community based on some actions that were contrary to who we are, but it’s also important for us to face up to the fact that when countries are threatened often they act rashly in ways that in retrospect were wrong.”
“We need to acknowledge that in part in order build in place systems, so that if – heaven forbid – we find out ourselves under the kind of direct threats that have occurred in the past that we recognise the dangers ahead of time and do better,” said Obama.
Asked if he was concerned the CIA could still be hiding things from him, Obama said no: “I have been very explicit … in prohibiting these techniques. Anybody who was doing the kind of things described in the report would not simply be keeping something from me, they would be directly violating the orders I have issued as commander in chief.”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/10/obamas-first-comments-torture-cia-accountability
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