Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) bashed a CIA torture report released by Democrats on Tuesday as just one last “thumb in the eye of the Bush administration.”
McConnell made those comments during a Politico Lessons from Leaders event.
“This is the Democrats’ only report. It had no recommendations,” McConnell said. “It served no purpose other than to confirm what we already knew that certain techniques were used on a few people.”
McConnell added that “the only result of this release is to endanger American lives around the globe right now.”
A day earlier McConnell and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a joint statement criticizing the release.
“It served absolutely no purpose other than one last thumb in the eye of the Bush administration and was a big mistake in my opinion,” McConnell said.
Asked if he questioned the whether torture techniques were effective in countering terrorism, McConnell said “almost everybody familiar has said they were.”
