'We TORTURED some folks' after 9/11, Obama says, reacting to a Senate intelligence report to be released soon
The United States tortured al-Qaeda detainees captured after the 9/11 attacks, President Obama said Friday, in some of his most expansive comments to date about a controversial set of CIA practices that he banned after taking office.
'We tortured some folks,' Obama said at a televised news conference at the White House. 'We did some things that were contrary to our values.'
In late 2003 a detainee was forced to stand on a box while attached to wires
Addressing the impending release of a Senate report that criticizes CIA treatment of detainees, Obama said he believed the mistreatment stemmed from the pressure national security officials felt to forestall another attack.
He said Americans should not be quick to pass judgment through the lens of a seemingly safer present day.
''It's important not for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect,' he said.
'I understand why it happened. I think it's important to recall ... how afraid people were' after the 9/11 attacks, Obama added.
'People did not know if more attacks were imminent.'
That view, which he expressed as a candidate for national office in 2008 and early in his presidency, explains why Obama did not push to pursue criminal charges against the Bush era officials who carried out the CIA program.
To this day, many of those officials insist that what they did was not torture, which is a felony under U.S. law.
The president's comments are a blow to those former officials, as well as an estimated 200 people currently working at the CIA who played some role in the interrogation program.
Torture is never an acceptable way to gain evidence, even if the subjects are terrorists. If any other western country were to do this, America would have invaded them right now America and its hypocrisy knows no bounds.
inb4 republicans somehow try to blame this on Obama just because he said it
Republicans would be so stupid to blame Obama (but they probably will anyway lol). Most of them are pro-torture anyway. Some Republicans even support the death sentence, whilst democrats tend to be against those things.
Great, just another "con" in the book for other countries to dislike us.
This isn't really news though, and I think our foreign policy has done infinitely worse damage to our reputation in parts of the world where these terror suspects are from (ie: drone strikes) than torture of a few legitimate suspects, as unfortunate as the latter may be.
I beg any US Americans on this site to not take this personally when I say: the US are full of ****. Their government and as a country I mean, not every other random US citizen.
America and its hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Ugh! I thought atrl was smarter than that. 
And this is old news. We've known this for years.
