In a press conference today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) broke with the Republican practice of referring to the Bush administration’s torture practices as “enhanced” or “harsh” interrogation techniques. As Ryan Grim notes, Boehner described the recently released OLC memos as outlining “torture techniques“:
BOEHNER: Last week, they released these memos outlining torture techniques. That was clearly a political decision and ignored the advice of their Director of National Intelligence and their CIA director.
Watch it:
Shortly thereafter, Boehner’s spokesperson Michael Steel e-mailed Grim, saying, “It is clear from the context that Boehner was simply using liberals’ verbiage to describe these interrogation techniques. The United States does not torture.” Earlier this week, when asked by CNS News if the US government did the right thing in waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammad, Boehner punted: “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask [the CIA].”
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