Appearing on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Republican New York Rep. Peter King said that waterboarding terrorists is not torture, and that if faced with stopping a terror attack and waterboarding, “I would hold his head underwater.”
“As far as the waterboarding, I don’t consider that torture in the way it was carried out,” he told guest host Kristen Welker, “I’ll say this very clearly, that if you are faced with 2,000 or 3,000 American dying and someone’s head being held underwater, I would hold his head underwater.” (VIDEO: Peter King On Islamic Terror: ‘Nobody Should Feel Safe)
King, who represents a portion of Long Island, offered a hypothetical where the United States managed to capture one of the hijackers the day before 9/11. “If we had captured Mohammed Atta on Sept. 10, if it involved waterboarding him to save the 3,000 people who were to burned to death and had to jump out of windows, I’d say go ahead and do it.”