Axelrod On Torture Prosecutions

From CBS's Face The Nation... Read carefully what senior adviser David Axelrod.....

SMITH: On the other hand, groups like the ACLU and others have said this proves there are prosecutable crimes that need to be acted on. What's your response to that?

AXELROD: Well, the president has said, if there were agents of the United States government acting on legal advice that what they were doing was legal and appropriate, that they should not be prosecuted.

If people acted outside the law, that's a different issue. But the main point is the president has banned these enhanced interrogation techniques. We have turned the page on this episode in our history. We have so many challenges in front of us, in terms of our national security, our relations in the world.

And remember, these techniques, far from enhancing our safety, really become a recruiting and propaganda tool for Al Qaida and the extremists around the world. We're moving past all of that. And to revisit it again and again and again isn't, in the president's view, in the country's interest.