President Barack Obama said Friday the United States “tortured some folks” during President George W. Bush’s tenure, a declaration that could conceivably bring consequences for alleged American torturers or those who authorized their conduct.

Some former Bush administration officials aren’t pleased with the remark, which was couched with praise for CIA workers who committed the alleged violations of international law – many of whom are “real patriots,” Obama said.

Former Bush administration attorney John Yoo, who authored the so-called torture memos in 2002 that justified harsh interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, insists “the United States did not ‘torture’ any ‘folks.’”

“The United States engaged in aggressive interrogation that did not go beyond the limits imposed by U.S. law,” Yoo tells U.S. News in an email. “I suppose President Obama thinks that the U.S. ‘murdered some folks’ when it executed Nazi and Japanese war leaders after WWII or it ‘shot some folks’ in cold blood when it killed bin Laden.”

Whether U.S. and international law allow for the tactics critics call torture is a matter of debate. Opponents of waterboarding – which induces a panicked sensation of drowning – and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques like sleep deprivation and the use of stress positions believe the conduct is criminal, but supporters strenuously deny that and point to their limited use and purported value.

Obama has referred to the tactics as torture on several occasions, notably before becoming president, and discontinued their use. His Department of Justice has made no attempt to prosecute ex-officials.

But former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton tells U.S. News he believes Obama’s latest declaration may land Bush administration lawyers and other officials in legal trouble.

“He’s opening up, or at least aiding an effort to establish liability for the top political leaders up to and including President Bush and [former] Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and a whole bunch of other people,” Bolton says.

Bolton says foreign prosecutors could “absolutely” cite the comment in attempted prosecutions. Some countries, he notes, assert universal jurisdiction for violations of human rights and others, such as Spain – where some U.S. military personnel are wanted for alleged Iraq War crimes – allow individual judges to initiate charges.

“He’s a constitutional scholar – it’s either intentional or very foolish,” Bolton says.

The former U.N. ambassador calls Obama’s Friday remarks a “cheap political shot” that “will be used by America’s enemies as confirmation of what they have been saying for a long time.”

“When you say, 'We tortured people,' it’s as if the Sadomasochism Association of the United States got up and was sent to interrogate these people,” he says. “This whole thing is blown way out of proportion.”

Bolton, who is not ruling out a run for president in 2016, says “it’s always possible” Bush could be personally indicted by a foreign court, but that “it would be a big mistake for anybody to do that and the United States should come down on any country that allowed that to happen very hard.”

A Bush spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Yoo, currently a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley, isn't convinced there's an increased likelihood of consequences for former officials.

“I hope that is not true," he says. “But with this president, I worry that he does not realize he cannot use the criminal law to punish policy disagreements, especially in foreign policy."

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George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley bristles at the suggestion alleged torture is a mere policy disagreement.

“Torture is not just a crime, it is defined as a war crime,” he says.

Unlike Bolton and Yoo, Turley sees Obama’s latest commentary as an attempt to redeem himself after years of shameful, politically motivated inaction. He doubts Bush officials are any more likely to be prosecuted, at home or abroad.

“Now that Obama is finishing his final term, he is trying to embrace the very principle that he shredded in his first term,” Turley says. “It is unlikely that he will entirely turn the corner and allow prosecution. Any such prosecution would lay bare years of obstruction and denials. It would also necessarily lead to top Bush officials and CIA officials who served in the Obama administration.”

And, Turley adds, “The Obama administration has made it clear that it will react badly to any country enforcing [anti-torture] treaties” against the U.S.

Though some former Bush administration officials believe Obama went too far by declaring torture occurred, Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the early 2000s, says the president hasn’t gone far enough.

“I seriously doubt that President Obama has the political will or the moral courage” to allow prosecutions, says Wilkerson, a forceful critic of many Bush-era policies after leaving office. “I certainly wish that he would and that we could achieve a degree of accountability at least – and that accountability would be achieved not simply with the underlings.”

A spokeswoman for Powell, who was reportedly kept in the dark about some CIA operations, says he has no comment on Obama’s remarks.

Obama offered his Friday comments in response to a lengthy Senate Intelligence Committee report on the interrogation tactics. The CIA took the lead on redacting portions of that report, returning its recommended public version to the committee last week. Many committee members are upset with the amount of content blacked out, further stalling the investigation’s public release.