CNN's Anderson Cooper took to Twitter Thursday to "clear up any confusion" about his remarks that seemed to compare the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques on al-Qaida terrorists with methods used by the murderous Nazi and Khmer Rouge regimes.
"I did not say that the CIA actions against terrorists were in any way equivalent to horrors of the Nazis, as some now imply I said,"
Cooper posted on his Twitter account.
"I did say that some techniques used by CIA were ones used by Khmer Rouge and others. When [Khmer Rouge] waterboarded, it was considered torture."
He added:
After the release of a damning Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, on Tuesday,
Cooper said the torture described in the report sounded like something out of the handbook of Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot.
"It is shocking … 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 … you can imagine it," Cooper said on "Anderson Cooper 360." "It's not that far removed from stuff they [Nazis] were doing."
The Nazis murdered an estimated 6 million Jews from across Europe in the Holocaust before and during World War II. The Khmer Rouge, the communist regime in Cambodia from 1975-1979, is believed to have murdered 2 million people in the infamous "Killing Fields."
On Wednesday,
Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity blasted Cooper's remarks, according to a transcript of the "Hannity" segment posted by Newsbusters.
"Wait a minute!" Hannity says. "Is Mr. CNN, is he gonna make or envision Nazi, Khmer Rouge analogies about the president’s drone strikes that have killed innocent men and women and children? Is he gonna make the same comparison here?"
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