On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina defended the use of waterboarding, a controversial torture tactic, that occurred during the George W. Bush administration.
“I believe that all of the evidence is very clear — that waterboarding was used in a very small handful of cases [and] was supervised by medical personnel in every one of those cases,” said Fiorina. “And I also believe that waterboarding was used when there was no other way to get information that was necessary.”
In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report outlining the details of the CIA’s torture program under the last Bush administration. The committee found that torture was an ineffective means of obtaining information from prisoners. Fiorina, however, said that the government should be more transparent about its intel practices.
“One of the things that I advised the NSA and CIA to do is to be as transparent as possible about as much as possible — because transparency reassures people,” she said. “Intelligence agencies that engage in covert activity need to be very creative about how they can be transparent while not jeopardizing our personnel and sources and methods.”
Or, the NSA and CIA could just refrain from torturing prisoners and spying on American citizens. Fiorina is simply proposing that the government agencies put a better spin on its nefarious programs.
For more on this story, visit Talking Points Memo “Carly Fiorina Defends Waterboarding: It ‘Kept Our Nation Safe’”
