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Several key Democrats and officials with Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that the potential prosecutions are a start, but they said the probe does nothing to investigate the actions of officials who sanctioned the brutal interrogation program. "Any investigation that begins and ends with the so-called rogue interrogators would be completely inadequate given the evidence that's already in the public domain," Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's national security project, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We know that senior officials authorized torture and we know that DOJ lawyers facilitated torture." Tom Parker, Amnesty International-USA's director of terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights, likened limiting the prosecutions to interrogators to "going after the drug mule and leaving the drug kingpin alone." Parker met with the White House's outreach office Tuesday and told the AP that officials made Obama's stand on the matter clear: An investigation into the previous administration's policies is not in the cards. "He doesn't think it will be politically useful to indulge in an investigation," Parker said. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said the Justice Department inquiry doesn't go far enough. "The abuses that were officially sanctioned amounted to torture and those at the very top who authorized, ordered or sought to provide legal cover for them should be held accountable," Feingold said in a statement issued late Monday.
[Associated
Press;
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