April 22, 2009: Republican Senator Falsely Labels Senate Torture Report a ‘Democrat Partisan’ Effort

Senator John Ensign (R-NV) calls the recently released Senate Armed Services Committee report on Bush-era torture policies (see April 21, 2009 and April 21, 2009) a “Democrat partisan” report. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asks Ensign if he is shocked that those torture practices were based on techniques used by Chinese Communists to elicit false confessions from American prisoners of war (see 1957). Ensign accuses Matthews of being “inflammatory.” Matthews says he is not being inflammatory because he is reading directly from the report. At that point, Ensign says: “Chris, the reason I said it is because you didn’t preface that with saying that was a Democrat report. That was a Democrat partisan report. And you have to understand where the people who were doing that report—where their ideology comes from.” Matthews retorts: “Well, apparently, Senator John McCain [R-AZ] is part of what you call a ‘Democrat report.’ It’s the full committee report.… [I]t’s the Armed Services Committee report. It went through three months of review by the Defense Department, until its final release just yesterday. It seems to me this was vetted, sir. And you say this was some Democrat report.” Ensign responds: “The Democrats are in control of all of the committees. This was a Democrat majority report. This was not with the participation of the minority where the minority signed it, ‘Yes, we agree with these views.’” Before the interview, another MSNBC correspondent noted that both McCain and another Republican committee member, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), endorsed the report. And reporter Amanda Terkel, of the progressive news Web site Think Progress, reports that she spoke with a committee spokesman who confirmed that the full, unanimous committee released the report. When Matthews informs Ensign that McCain endorsed the report, Ensign says: “Well, I disagree with you. We had a discussion at lunch about this and many members of the [Senate Intelligence Committee and Armed Services Committee] completely disagreed with the report. That’s why I said it was a Democrat partisan report.” [Think Progress, 4/22/2009]