It's a program that was ``far more brutal than people were led to believe.''
That's how Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, describes the CIA's methods of interrogating terror suspects at secret overseas prisons in the aftermath of 9/11. Her panel today released its report on those tactics.

President Barack Obama says the practices ``did significant damage to America's standing in the world.''

The report cites CIA cables and other documents to reject the central justification for the use of torture -- that it prevented terror plots and saved American lives.
Some Senate Republicans are disputing the findings of today's report from the Senate Intelligence Committee about the interrogation techniques used by the CIA in secret prisons overseas after the 9/11 attacks.

But two leading Republican senators -- Mitch McConnell and Saxby Chambliss -- say the interrogation program helped ``identify and capture important al-Qaida terrorists.''

Another GOP senator, however, welcomed the report. John McCain, who was tortured in Vietnam as a prisoner of war, said in a Senate speech, ``We gave up much in the expectation that torture would make us safer.''

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