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”.
Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, who will face Mr Trump in November’s election, said in response to the attacks in Istanbul that the US “cannot retreat”.
“We must deepen our co-operation with our allies and partners in the Middle East and Europe to take on this threat”.
Mr Trump has faced much criticism – even from within his own party – by calling on the US to close its borders to Muslim arrivals.
Recently there are signs that he is retreating from that and instead recommending a ban from people arriving from “terror nations” although it’s not clear which countries they are.
Earlier on Tuesday, he compared the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement to rape and threatened to confront China in a trade war.
He says that free trade, which has been Republican orthodoxy for many years, hurts American workers.
“Let’s make america torture again!”
Yea let’s start by waterboarding him and Hitlery. How’s that sound?
And Bush
This is one of the key reason why Trump and most of his bleating followers are morally bankrupt turds. They’re far too obsessed with appearing “tough” without really understanding what that entails. Toughness is about having the courage to stick to your principles, and it’s about being able to overcome hardship. Dishing out pain to helpless prisoners is cowardice, not toughness.
I wouldn’t necessarily object to private individuals torturing someone who had already tortured someone else in exactly the same way. But governments should NEVER be allowed to torture.
There are also pragmatic reasons to prohibit torture. It provokes more “terrorism” (real or so-labeled). It gives enemy fighters a greater incentive to fight to the death when in danger of capture, rather than possibly surrender and provide intelligence under ordinary interrogation. It makes your own captured personnel more likely to be treated with extreme brutality.
Exactly right BMF
Because if someone or some government tortures any of my family I would want payback at 100 fold
And allowing a government to carry out acts of torture would no doubt get out of hand
And quite possibly make the populous decide it’s time for payback
As we are seeing with what this government has done and has already done to other country’s and as we awake ones know ,they are looking for paybacks and will take out their aggression on anyone , not necessarily on the ones that deserve it
So we the people will brunt the punishment
Rather than those that requested the 1st act of aggression
Unless the awake decide we’ve had enough
I admit i dont know on this my mind says do it if thats what you need . Maybe he meant water boarding :). Put me in the bathroom w a spider and i will tell you everything you want and more.
GOOD DONALD!!!!! YERRRRRRRRR NEXT!!!!!!!!..LMAO!!!!
“I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.”
Good. Maybe I’ll get to take you for a swim someday.
Trump is showing himself to be no different than the others, and hopefully people are realizing this.
I normally support Trump and most of the positions he takes, but I draw the line at this mentally insane notion of legitimizing torture.
Here are my reasons. First of all, torture is immoral and barbaric and people who are tortured will say or confess to anything, just to get the torture to stop. Paul Craig Roberts was probably the first guy to recognize what the diabolically evil Bush Admin neo-cons were doing when word leaked out about the torture going on at Gitmo and over in Iraq during the US occupation. The Iraq war was based on a foundation of deliberate and intentional neo-con LIES; this point cannot be argued. Even Trump has said as much, and on more than one occasion. So, since the neo-cons who lied us into that war, and all of the subsequent wars, needed to make it appear to the American public that their illegal wars were producing ‘results’ that were worth the cost and sacrifice of the lives of US soldiers – the neo-cons started offering $25,000 rewards to any Iraqi who would hand over anyone who they thought to be a ‘terrorist’. With the Iraqi government infrastructure destroyed – as well as most of the civilian infrastructure, millions of Iraqis were out of work and had no means to earn any income to feed themselves and their families. So, predictably, these hungry Iraqis were given an opportunity to get a $25K paycheck – so, they started kidnapping their fellow countrymen who they might have had a personal beef with, and turning them over to the US military and claiming that they were terrorists. The neo-cons would then fly these poor saps down to GitMO and torture them until they agreed to sign ‘confessions’ that the neo-cons had written for them, whereupon the neo-cons like Wolfowitz would carry those coerced ‘confessions’ over to Congress and wave them around as ‘proof’ that their phony ‘Global War on Terror’ was producing results and therefore, needed to continue to receive funding from Congress. As I said, credit Paul Craig Roberts for his outstanding analysis and exposure of what these evil neo-cons were pulling over on the embarrassingly dumb and gullible American public.
Incidentally, a similar technique was used by jews during the Nuremberg Trials – where they tortured German captives in order to coerce them into signing ‘confessions’. So, Roberts isn’t necessarily a genius for having figured this scam out – it’s been used by jews countless times before.
This is what happens when we allow our government to get away with using torture, folks. It gives these unscrupulous tyrants a means to coerce confessions from people that they then turn around and use to help them buffalo the nose picking couch potatoes into supporting their nefarious agendas.
My second reason for opposing the use of torture – is because, once the precedent has been established that it is ‘ok’ for our Government to use torture – sooner or later, that torture is going to be used on American citizens, here on American soil. This is the nature of the criminal beasts who today have hijacked the US Government. Torture violates the 8th Amendment to the Bill of Rights, folks:
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Thus, for all of those Trump fans out there who think its ‘cool’ that Trump says he loves ‘waterboarding’ – I’d advise you short sighted idiots to pull your heads out of your hind parts and ask yourself this question: “Should ANY politician be trusted by the citizens to not abuse a power given to them to use TORTURE?” Or, if you think Trump can trusted to just use torture on Muslim terrorists – what about Hillary or any other one of these virulently anti-White, hate filled, White genocide craving, intolerant leftists in the Democrat Party? If whoever sits in the Oval Office has the legal authority to use torture – are you Trump fans so naive as to not understand that if the left controls the White House – they’ll use torture on White conservatives here in America?
The answer is simple. Prohibit all torture. Allow or trust NO politician with that kind of power.