CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday compared U.S. operatives who employed enhanced interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists to Nazis and the dreaded Khmer Rouge.
“It is shocking,” Cooper said, referring to a report released Tuesday by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats that detailed the CIA’s and government contractors’ treatment of suspected terrorists.
“When you read this, if you envision Nazis doing this, and I even hate to say this, if you envision the Khmer Rouge doing this, it all – you can imagine that,” Cooper said.
“I mean, it’s not that far removed from the stuff that they were doing,” he added, referencing some of the report’s more shocking details, including the claim American operatives occasionally forced “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” on detainees. The report also claimed U.S. operatives gathered very little intelligence from suspected terrorists, despite the application of enhanced interrogation techniques, which included water-boarding, sleep deprivation and at least one interrogator threatening to “cut [a detainee’s] mother’s throat.”
The Nazis murdered six million Jews from across Europe during the Holocaust prior to and during World War II. The Khmer Rouge, the fanatical communist regime that reigned supreme in Cambodia from 1975-1979, is believed to have murdered two million people.
Spokespersons with CNN did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
