A top Senate Republican slammed Donald Trump’s stance on waterboarding on Monday, an action that promptly received an expression of gratitude from the White House.
“It is … important to remember that our nation has tried, convicted, and executed foreign combatants who employed methods of torture, including waterboarding, against American prisoners of war,” Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement. “As I have said before, our nation should never have employed such practices in the past, and we should never permit them in the future.”
“Our nation needs a Commander-in-Chief who will make clear to those that fight on our behalf that they are defending this sacred ideal, and that sacrificing our respect for human dignity will make it harder, not easier, to prevail in this war,” McCain added. McCain, a Vietnam veteran, spent six years as a prisoner of war and was repeatedly tortured.
President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, expressed his agreement in a message on Twitter.
Thanks, Chairman McCain. https://t.co/xxIlhy6kwK
— Denis McDonough (@Denis44) February 8, 2016
Trump has been under fire since a Republican presidential debate held on Saturday in which he said waterboarding did not constitute torture and that he would support bringing it back.
“Under the definition of torture, no, it’s not. It is enhanced interrogation … It does not meet the generally recognized definition of torture,” Trump said. He added that he would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
