Sen. Tom Cotton falsely claimed that "waterboarding isn't torture," on CNN's The Situation Room Wednesday afternoon when asked to respond about Trump's support of torture by Wolf Blitzer.
The US military views waterboarding as torture and the CIA Director said he'd resign if ordered to start torturing suspects, again.
Wolf asked Sen. Cotton, "Do you agree with him [Trump] torture works and waterboarding and much worse would be a good idea?"
Cotton replied, "Waterboarding isn’t torture. We do waterboarding to our own soldiers in the military.”
Wolf explained, "That was in training. The US doesn't do it anymore..."
Cotton replied, "But we've done it in the past."
Wolf, "Do you think the US should do it again?
Cotton said, "..and radio DJs volunteer for it so I don’t think something people volunteer for is torture.”
Wolf replied, "So you accept waterboarding?"
The Senator said, “If experienced intelligence professionals come to the president of the United States and say, ‘We think this terrorist has critical information and we need to obtain it, and this is the only way we can obtain it,’ that’s a tough call...But the presidency is a tough job, and if you’re not willing to make those tough calls you shouldn’t seek the office. Donald Trump’s a pretty tough guy and I think he’s ready to make those tough calls.”
The ticking time bomb scenario is always the go-to response from pro-torture members of Congress, Republican politicians and pundits.
But torture is torture and experienced intelligence professionals have said so many times. A report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence refutes all claims about the reliability of torture.
Waterboarding troops first began from the military program called SERE, which actually validates waterboarding as torture.
The Times reports the SERE program was “created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.”
Sen. Cotton has heard about this all before and it's troubling that he's using baseless examples and out right lies to defend the right to use torture, again.
