Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain expressed disappointment Monday with comments made by several Republican presidential candidates over the weekend during a debate hosted by CBS News and the National Journal.
“Very disappointed by statements at SC GOP debate supporting waterboarding,” McCain tweeted. “Waterboarding is torture.”
McCain, the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nominee, was tortured in captivity during the Vietnam War. During the Bush administration, he was an ardent opponent of the practice.
Republican candidates were asked at Saturday evening’s debate if they would use the controversial practice, which simulates drowning, if they were elected president. Each candidate indicated they would, except for Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.
“Torture is illegal … waterboarding is torture,” Paul said. “It’s illegal under international law and under our law. It’s also immoral and it’s also very impractical. There’s no evidence that you really get reliable evidence.”
“We diminish our standing in the world and the values we project — which include liberty, democracy, human rights and open markets — when we torture,” Huntsman said. “We should not torture. Waterboarding is torture.”
Following the debate, Paul’s campaign noted that in the 1980s, the Reagan Justice Department identified waterboarding as torture.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain said at the debate, “I don’t see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique.”
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said, “If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding.”
Three al-Qaida members were waterboarded during the Bush administration, including suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was subjected to the practice 183 times.
An op-ed by McCain, published in the Washington Post in May, argued that contrary to the prevailing narrative, waterboarding had no role in the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, describing the information produced by the practice as “false and misleading.”
A spokesman for McCain did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller’s inquiry as to whether the issue would influence which candidate McCain choses to endorse in the primary.
