CIA Director John Brennan said on April 10 that he would refuse to engage in waterboarding, even if a future president ordered him to.
“I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I’ve heard bandied about, because this institution needs to endure,” Brennan said in an interview with NBC News.
The next day, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump challenged Brennan’s remarks calling them “ridiculous.”
“I mean, they chop off heads and they drown people in cages with 50 in a cage in big steel, heavy cages, drop ‘em right into the water, drown people and we can’t waterboard and we can’t do anything,” Trump said in a telephone interview on April 11 with “Fox & Friends.”
“We have a huge problem with ISIS, which we can’t beat. And the reason we can’t beat them is that we won’t use strong tactics,” Trump said.
In February, Trump said at a campaign event in South Carolina that he supports waterboarding “and much worse.”
“Half these guys [say]: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works,” Trump said.
Trump’s main rival, Ted Cruz stated in a debate that waterboarding doesn’t fit the definition of torture, but wouldn’t plan to “bring it back in any sort of widespread use” if he were elected president.
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