Donald Trump is bucking the opinions of military leaders by doubling down on his support for waterboarding and other tough methods of dealing with terrorists.

The latest bellicose rhetoric from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee follows a terrorist attack in Istanbul that killed at least 42.

“What do you think about waterboarding?” Trump asked an Ohio crowd at a rally the night of the attack. “I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.”
“So we can’t do waterboarding, but they can do chopping off heads, drowning people in sealed cages … you have to fight fire with fire,” Trump added.

The comments prompted retired military leaders — including two former CIA directors — to again reject the use of waterboarding, a practice banned by international law in which water is poured over a captive to simulate drowning.

“It’s not the United States of America. It’s not what we are all about. It’s not what we are,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a retired Navy captain and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday at the Bipartisan Center

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During a Republican debate in March, Trump said he would bring back waterboarding, which is outlawed under international and national law, and order troops to carry it out.

“If I say do it, they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about,” he said during the debate in Detroit.

Days later, after prompting criticism from military and legal experts, Trump said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, “I will not order our military or other officials to violate those laws and will seek their advice on such matters.” During a Republican debate in March, Trump said he would bring back waterboarding, which is outlawed under international and national law, and order troops to carry it out.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/286209-trump-bucks-military-on-waterboarding

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee and ardent waterboarding supporter Donald Trump wants America to be much tougher on suspected terrorists. So tough, in fact, that we must to do “the unthinkable” when it comes to prisoner interrogation, he said Thursday.

Trump, during an interview with New Hampshire’s NH1, was asked about his calls to reinstate waterboarding following Tuesday’s attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport that killed at least 44 people. Trump has enthusiastically endorsed tactics now widely regarded as torture, and has discounted recent criticism from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who said the interrogation technique “was not the American way.“

“Well it’s not the American way to have heads chopped off and have people drowning in steel cages,” Trump said, presumably referring to videos released by the Islamic State that show such execution methods. “And so we can have our disagreements, but we’re going to have to get much tougher as a country. We’re going to have to be a lot sharper and we’re going to have to do things that are unthinkable almost.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-torture-waterboarding_us_5775d740e4b04164640f6597?section=