Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) chided Senate Democrats for wasting time and money investigating an old interrogation and detention program “while the world around us burns.”
“This is not pleasant duty for me,” Chambliss said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “This particular study has been one of the very few areas where we have never been able to see eye to eye.”
{mosads}Chambliss made the comments after Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced the 500-page summary report was being released. Her committee spent years investigating the CIA’s detention and interrogation program under former President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Chambliss said Democrats on the committee have spent the last five years investigating a program that was ended nearly eight years ago.
The report found that the CIA used torture to try and garner information from detainees, and lied to Congress and the public about the scale of their techniques. Chambliss said the report comes to “erroneous and inflammatory conclusions.”
Some Republicans said the report shouldn’t have been released because it might encourage more international violence against the United States.
“The U.S. today is faced with a wide array of security challenges,” Chambliss said. “It could be used to incite unrest.”
Chambliss defended the CIA program, saying it saved lives. The report contradicts that assertion.