Trump Calls For Torture Saying ‘I Like Waterboarding a Lot’
Republican Donald Trump has repeated calls for the return of waterboarding against Islamic State militants, saying: “I like it a lot.”
His comments at a rally in Ohio came hours after suicide bombers killed 41 people at an airport in Istanbul.
“You have to fight fire with fire,” said the Republicans’ likely nominee, after referring to IS beheadings.
Waterboarding, described by President Barack Obama as torture, was banned by the US in 2006.
The Turkish authorities believe the so-called Islamic State was behind the attacks at Ataturk International Airport on Tuesday.
“We have to fight so viciously and violently because we’re dealing with violent people,” Mr Trump said.
At one point, he asked the crowd: “What do you think about waterboarding?”
They cheered as he gave his answer: “I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.”
The New York tycoon lamented that the US is prevented from waterboarding but “they [Islamic State] can do chopping off heads, drowning people in steel cages, they can do whatever they want to do”.
(h/t BBC)
Reality
Trump’s proposed reliance on tactics used by Bond villains as a practical response to the terrorist acts of the Islamic State should be leaving people feeling aghast and concerned.
Unlike fictional TV shows, like 24 where Jack Bauer runs around and tortures his way to the bad guy or movies like Zero Dark Thirty who include torture scenes that never happened which lead to the capture of Osama Bin Laden, reality is quite different.
Waterboarding, and other forms of torture, is considered a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions and is not reliable for obtaining truthful, useful intelligence.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that “the CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.” There was no proof, according to the 6,700 page report, that information obtained through waterboarding prevented any attacks or saved any lives, or that information obtained from the detainees was not or could not have been obtained through conventional interrogation methods.
In-fact, we’ve know for centuries that torture is not effective. Here is Napoleon’s own words on the subject:
“It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.”
Instead, rapport-building techniques are 14 times more effective in extracting information than torture and has the upside of not being unethical.
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