If Democrats insist on probing the Bush administration's program of detainee torture, they'd better be careful, a senior Senate Republican said Tuesday, because they might find blood on their own hands as well.

"To sit quietly and to let this happen and then to come back later and say people ought to be prosecuted criminally, not just here in the United States but perhaps internationally, to me is inconsistent, to say the least," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

"If people are going to start looking for responsibility and accountability, I think you'd also have to look at the members of Congress who were in those classified settings who approved those same interrogation techniques," Cornyn told reporters.

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Cornyn said he wasn't necessarily suggesting that Democrats should have spoken out publicly, because the briefings were classified, but that they should have been more forceful in private meetings with the president.

"There is a certain responsibility to speak up if you object," he said.