During Saturday’s Republican presidential debate, candidates Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump tried to outdo each other on brutal interrogation tactics, with all three candidates voicing support for waterboarding, a torture technique used by the Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush. “Are we going to subject people to torture?”
Advertisement
“‘And by the way, waterboarding is peanuts compared to what we’re talking about happening there.'” Trump said referencing a statement he had made earlier. However, he didn’t say how he would bring back waterboarding – or something worse.
“What I do say is there will be a certain number of people that will be on the street dying, and as a Republican, I don’t want that to happen”, he said.
Trump justified the use of waterboarding and other unnamed advanced interrogation techniques because terror groups use greater measures to inflict fear and harm.
“He didn’t like the question, you could see”, Trump said of Cruz, according to The Hill.
Trump said Islamic terrorists don’t view waterboarding as “real torture”.
Asked bythe Telegraph who his Muslim backers were, Mr Trump reportedly ducked the question.
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump: “If I’m elected president, we will win, and we will win, and we will win”.
The newspaper added that Trump’s son was also unable to throw any light on his father’s Muslim friends. Americans were punished for waterboarding prisoners during the Philippine-American and Vietnam wars and even many Republicans-including torture victim Sen.
Cruz said that “under the definition of torture”, waterboarding would be classified as “enhanced interrogation”, due to the fact that it is not “excruciating pain that is equivalent to losing organs and system”.
I would bring back waterboarding.
“Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the risky threat it poses, our country can not be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life”.
“Let me talk. Quiet”, replied Trump to jeers from the crowd. Congress has changed the laws, and I think where we stand is the appropriate place.
“I know something about lead poisoning because of the work I’ve done in the past (with Children’s Defense Fund) and as a senator from NY, we had a lot of old housing with lead paint in it. A lot of kids suffered from lead poisoning”, Clinton said.
Advertisement
Critics say it is torture, and Democratic President Barack Obama banned use of the method days after taking office in 2009.
