Dozens of top military officials are urging members of both parties’ platform committees to reject torture as an intelligence gathering tool amid renewed calls from presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to “fight fire with fire” as the U.S. seeks to destroy the Islamic State terror group.
Nearly 60 retired generals and admirals penned separate letters Thursday to the Republican and Democratic platform committees, calling on them to “unequivocally” denounce “the use of torture and other official cruelty” against suspected terrorists. The letters come two days after suicide bombers in Turkey killed 42 people and left hundreds more injured during an attack at an Istanbul airport.
“As retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, we committed our professional lives to defending the national security of the United States and to upholding the Constitution. This is not, and should not be, a partisan issue,” they wrote, noting that “waterboarding and other so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ are also prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and other sources of international law.”
The letter continued, “We have diverse political affiliations and opinions, but we are in firm and unanimous agreement that the United States is strongest when it remains faithful to its core values. We are asking the platform committees of both major parties to send a clear message that the next president of the United States will uphold our obligations under international and domestic law, and reaffirm the United States’ long-standing and proper role as a world leader on human rights.”
Several of the letter’s signatories previously worked with Arizona Sen. John McCain on the Detainee Treatment Act passed by Congress in 2005. The amendment prohibits “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” of prisoners of the U.S. government including those detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay.
“This is not, and should not be, a partisan issue,” the generals and admirals said of torture in their letter.
Hours after Tuesday’s terror attacks in Turkey, Trump issued a statement urging the U.S. to “do everything in our power to improve our security to keep America safe.” Later that evening, he told voters in Ohio that Americans must “fight so viciously and violently because we’re dealing with violent people.”
“Can you imagine them sitting around the table or wherever they’re eating their dinner, talking about the Americans don’t do waterboarding and yet we chop off heads?” Trump said of Islamic State militants. “They probably think we’re weak, we’re stupid, we don’t know what we’re doing, we have no leadership. You know, you have to fight fire with fire.”
Members of the Democratic and Republican Party platform committees are set to convene separately shortly before both parties host their nominating conventions next month.
