21 Republican US senators just voted against a ban on torture. Here are their names
US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (R) is flanked by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) (L) and Senator John Thune (R-SD) (2nd L) as he addresses reporters after the weekly Senate Republican caucus luncheon at the U. Capitol in Washington June 16, 2015.
Turns out US lawmakers still can't agree on whether or not it's okay to torture people.
The US Senate passed a bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act on Tuesday that outlaws interrogation techniques that the Bush administration called "enhanced" and that most of the rest of the world calls "torture."
US President Barack Obama banned torture in 2009 using an executive order, and now, by a vote of 72-21, the Senate has joined him. The amendment makes the US Army Field Manual the standard for all defense and intelligence interrogations, and guarantees the International Red Cross access to all detainees in US custody.
So who are the 21 US Senators who voted against this ban on torture?
Who are the 21 elected lawmakers who read the CIA torture report — which described a detention and interrogation program in which some detainees were waterboarded to the point of near-drowning; held into "stress positions" that kept them standing on broken legs and feet; deprived of sleep for days; intentionally driven to the point of psychological breakdown; and forced to undergo "rectal feeding" and "rectal hydration" — and thought, "meh?"
Let the record show that these are the names of the 21 US senators, all of them Republicans, who voted against the torture ban:
- Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama
- Tom Cotton, Arkansas
- Michael Crapo, R-Idaho
- James Risch, R-Idaho
- Daniel Coats, R-Indiana
- Joni Ernst, R-Iowa
- Pat Roberts, R-Kansas
- Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky (Senate majority leader)
- David Vitter, R-Louisiana
- Thad Cochran, R-Mississippi
- Roy Blunt, R-Missouri
- Deb Fischer, R-Nebraska
- Benjamin Sasse, R-Nebraska
- Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma
- James Lankford, R-Oklahoma
- Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina
- Tim Scott, R-South Carolina
- John Cornyn, R-Texas
- Orrin Hatch, R-Utah
- Mike Lee, R-Utah
- John Barrasso, R-Wyoming
You can add to that list Marco Rubio, Republican from Florida and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, who abstained.
This bipartisan amendment is a sign that many US lawmakers want to make sure the United States never tortures in the name of national security again.
These 21 senators aren't among them.
More from GlobalPost:
Did [redacted] help the US torture?
Poland wrestles with the legacy of a secret CIA torture site
The world's torture problem, in one infographic
13 startling facts from Amnesty's report on torture around the world