Fight fire Trump says open to torturing waterboarding ISIS

Fight fire Trump says open to torturing waterboarding ISIS

NEWS: goo.gl/a3kAcQ



President Donald Trump left the door open on Wednesday for a return to 9/11-era U.S. policy on torturing suspected terrorists, saying he believes it works.

'I want to keep our country safe,' he told ABC News, referring to America's protracted battle against the ISIS terror army.

'When they're shooting – when they're chopping off the heads of our people, and other people, when they're chopping off the heads of people because they happen to be a Christian, in the Middle East, when ISIS is doing things that nobody has ever heard of since Medieval times, would I feel strongly about waterboarding?' he asked in an Oval Office interview.





'As far as I'm concerned, we have to fight fire with fire.'



Trump said he would defer to the judgment of Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, both of whom are staunchly against torturing terror suspects or subjecting them to 'enhanced' interrogation techniques.

'I'm going with General Mattis. I'm going with my [Defense] secretary,' the president said. 'Because I think Pompeo is going to be phenomenal. I'm going to go with what they say.'

But he told interviewers that he had spoken recently with top U.S. intelligence officials who agree with him that torture can yield useful results.

'I have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people at the highest level of intelligence, and I ask them the question: "Does it work? Does torture work?"' Trump said.

'And the answer was: "Yes. Absolutely".'

Correspondent Jonathan Karl summed up the interview for ABC viewers during the lunch hour: 'So for now, no waterboarding. No torture. But he made it clear that he could bring it back.'

Resuming U.S.-sanctioned torture would go against strict bans put in place by former president Barack Obama and turn up the heat on Capitol Hill.



Some former government leaders have insisted 'enhanced interrogation' programs were effective in obtaining critical intelligence following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, others blame it for some of the worst human-rights abuses in the 'war on terror' that followed.

'The president can sign whatever executive orders he likes. But the law is the law,' Republican Sen. John McCain, who was held captive during the Vietnam War, said Wednesday in a statement.



'We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America.'

But Trump sounded hours earlier like a man on the fence.

'I don't want people to chop off the citizens' – or anybody's heads in the Middle East, okay? – because they're Christian or Muslim or anything else,' he said.

'Look, now they chop them off and they put them on camera and they send them all over the world. So we have that, and we're not allowed to do anything. We're not playing on an even field.'

'I will rely on Pompeo and Mattis and my group,' the president said at last. 'And if they don't want to do [it], that's fine. If they do want to do [it], then I will work toward that end.'

'I want to do everything within the bounds of what you're allowed to do legally. But do I feel it works? Absolutely, I feel it works.'

Pompeo has already pledged not to go in that direction.

He told a Senate panel a week before Trump's inauguration that he would 'absolutely not' comply with an Oval Office order to resume the use of interrogation techniques that the international community considers 'torture.'

'Moreover, I can't imagine that I would be asked that by the president-elect,' he said.



Separately on Wednesday, multiple news outlets reported on a document whose source claimed it was a 'draft executive order' awaiting action by the White House.

The document recommended a major review of America's methods for interrogating terror suspects and the possible reopening of CIA 'black-site' prisons overseas.

It instructs top national security officers to 'recommend to the president whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States and whether such program should include the use of detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.'

The document says U.S. laws should be obeyed at all times and explicitly rejects 'torture.'

Even so, White House press secretary Sean Spicer flatly denied that the White House had created or circulated it.