By Mariko Lamb- Talk Radio News Service

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) urged President Barack Obama to establish a commission to investigate the use of enhanced interrogation techniques during a press conference today.

NRCAT is headed by a collaboration of prominent religious leaders of various denominations.  Despite differences in religious faith, all leaders and advocates of the campaign expressed the same views that if the U.S. acted in a way that could be considered torture, then it should be identified, eliminated, and prevented.  Each leader or delegate found a basis of argument against torture in his or her own religious beliefs.

Speaker Rabbi Gutow said, “Torture is not a Jewish value…One should not torture someone created in the image of his or her own god.”

Reverend Dr. John Thomas also condemned torture, saying an investigation of enhanced interrogation techniques “will be difficult and challenging, but necessary.”

Additional objectives of the campaign, founded in January 2006, include monitoring the special task force’s interrogation methods, passing the Torture Victim’s Relief Act, repealing the Military Commissions Act, and ensuing access of detainees to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) explains how the CIA created the laws allowing them to implement waterboarding as an interrogation technique, but it failed to tell Congress what was happening. She believes that the CIA is attempting to shift the spotlight from themselves and onto other groups, like Congress. (0:27)

 

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During the Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency General Hayden says that information gathering techniques used by the CIA are lawful, appropriate, and adequate to the needs of the CIA program. He then says that their manual is different than the Army Field Manual. He then uses as an example the information gathered from Saddam Hussein using the CIA’s techniques. Vice Chairman Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) interrupts by saying that the information was obtained right before he [Hussein] was about to be hanged. “Talk about an enhanced interrogation technique,” Bond says. (:55)

 

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