A senior Democratic senator calls for the prosecution of Bush administration officials over waterboarding as the Obama side continues with its reluctance.

Democratic Senator Chris Dodd hit out at the decision made by White House official to release the most complete account of the Bush administration's interrogation techniques without having any intention to launch a criminal probe on the issue.

Speaking to journalists in Connecticut on Tuesday, the veteran US politician ridiculed President Barack Obama for his irresolute approach in handling the case, saying "I don't know who the genius was in the room that night when they were discussing [the memos]."

"But if you are going to make the decision to release the documents, I presume every one of us here would then have a follow up question, which is: Well, what are you going to do about it? And if the answer is nothing, we are just going to release the documents.... Some of us in the room would say, 'Well wait a minute, you have a problem. If you are going to release them then you are going to have to answer the next question, what are you going to do with them?'"

The 65-year-old Democrat confirmed the waterboarding technique to elicit information from "terror suspects" as torture and added that if "people did do something illegal it ought to be pursued."

Dodd rejected President Obama's suggestion to only 'reflect on the past without having retributions,' noting, "I know people don't want to go back, because it is uncomfortable," he said.

"You know my father was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. They were not a popular idea.... Nuremberg became a symbol of who we were. Even these thugs got a lawyer; even these thugs got a trial despite their acts. And so we became a symbol of jurisprudence and the rule of law."

The US President has indicated that his unwillingness to conduct a proper inquiry against the previous administration's officials who wrote the torture memos roots in the principle put forth by Freedom of Information Act that ensures the indemnity of US citizens and their constitutional rights of privacy.

Dodd, however, contradicted the president stating, "Not to prosecute people or pursue them when these acts occur is, in a sense, to invite them again."

When asked if the probe he was seeking would go "as high as Cheney's office," the Connecticut Democrat said, "You gotta go where you gotta go."

The criticism comes after the Justice Department made public classified Bush-era memos detailing the controversial CIA interrogation program.

The tactics included previously unacknowledged strategies of "slamming a prisoner into a wall" and "placing an insect near a detainee terrified of bugs."

Another memo revealed that waterboarding had been used a total of 266 times on two of the three al Qaeda suspects that the agency had previously acknowledged were subjected to waterboarding.

After the release of the secret memos raised fears in the spy agency, President Obama made a visit to the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters to pacify American spies.

The US president said that his administration would prosecute neither CIA interrogators nor the authors of the memos because they acted on the basis of the department's legal blessing.

President Obama said he had ended the techniques revealed in the memos "because I believe our nation is stronger and more secure when we deploy the full measure of both our power and the power of our values, including the rule of law."

ARQN/SC/CS