Obama news conference: 'Waterboarding is torture'

In answer to a question about waterboarding and whether it violates the Geneva Conventions, Obama is unequivocal: “Waterboarding is torture.”

He adds: “Waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe it’s torture. That is not just my opinion; it’s the opinion of many who have examined the topic.”

He offers a history lesson to bolster his view:

We could have gotten information in ways that are consistent with our values, with who we are. I was struck by an article I was reading the other day; the British in World War II when London was being bombed to smithereens … Churchill said, we don’t torture. 

When the entire British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat, and the reason was that Churchill understood: you start taking short cuts over time that erodes what’s best in the people, it erodes the character of a country.

I strongly believe the steps that we’ve taken to prevent these kinds of enhanced interrogations techniques will … make us stronger over the long term.

Part of what makes us still a beacon to the world is that we are willing to hold true to our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.  At the same time it takes away a critical recruitment tool that Al Quaeda has used to try to demonize the United States and justify killing civilians.

-- Robin Abcarian

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Comments

[Fenris]

Uh-bama's His naivety is almost as almost as profound as his ego.

What does he know about defending this nation or national security issues outside his 100 days of a mockery of a presidency?

Is his knowledge and comparison of history that ignorant? Winston Churchill was a leader in a truly different world war against with steadfast allies and clearly defined enemies! Their prisoners were soldiers, not Islamic terrorists! And if you know history torture was not ruled out for those who were captured as spies...on both sides of the war.

[Bob in TX]

Our President is amazingly ignorant of history. The British government used waterboarding techniques in the 1930s on Arab and Palestinian prisoners. So says NPR, not known for taking a conservative viewpoint.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15917081

[Anee]

Right on Fenris and Bob, finally some people who haven't drank the Kool aid. BO will go down in history as the worst president ever, sorry Bush. He will be known as the idiot who bankrupt and destroyed this great country, while bowing to arab kings and getting photo ops with dictators and the statue of liberty.

[Nick in Virginia]

I disagree that al Qaeda can use waterboarding as a recruitment tool for new terrorists. When you think about what al Qaeda does to its prisoners (I remember one technique that was listed in an al Qaeda handbook of drilling holes into a person's head), claiming that the U.S. uses waterboarding would only make al Qaeda look like sissies. Remember what these goons did to Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg; remember what they did to the captured Pvts. Menchacha and Tucker. Do you really think people who do that would be infuriated over the use of waterboarding?

And BFD if he thinks waterboarding is torture. That has no bearing on its use 5 years ago. He has the authority to order anyone in the Executive Branch not to use it. He does not have the Constitutional Authority to make it a law. If a new President comes in and says "I do not consider waterboarding to be torture, you may use it again", then it can be used.

And if Congress makes a law specifically declaring waterboarding to be torture, they STILL can't go after the Bush administration because of the Constitutional prohibition on Ex Post Facto laws. The American people are smart enough to understand this, but the Dems just want to keep getting bad publicity out about the Bush administration (but won't release the CIA minutes where Nancy Pelosi feared that waterboarding wasn't tough enough).

Sorry if I rambled a bit, but this person (0bama) really makes me sick.

0bama is a clown. He is a fraud. We are stuck with him for another 3 years 9 months. I do not expect him to be re-elected, no matter how much the MSM kisses his butt.

[jch]

Living under a commie lib idiot Democrat in the White House is torture.

[patilee]

I "changed" the channel. When he mocked me I was finished. I finally see the light. I listened while he mocked the American people to other countries, I made excuses for him. Then he mocked the American people to other Americans, the Tea Parties. What happened to free speech? Freedom of expression. It's only allowed when it suits his purposes? His and his buddies plans? No, I'm done! No thank you Mr. President. I don't plan on a brown shirt in my future.

[Dino Brava]

If the Government has a terrorist in custody and they are 95% sure he knows where a "dirty" bomb is hidden in downtown Chicago, what will the Obama administration do? Not much, by their own admission. So, based on Obama's high-minded principles, we get to watch tens of thousands of Americans die because he is more concerned about the terrorist's rights than our safety.
Jeepers!......Thanks to Obama, our ideals and values have just been upheld and I feel good about America. K-rist!! Bring back Bush and Cheney!

[Angela Fuentes]

This analogy doesn't fit at all. It is a little embarrassing that Obama seems not to grasp this. Churchill did not torture those people because they were POWs and subject to Geneva Convention protections. Terrorists have no state and are not parties to the Geneva Convention. It is a fact that they could be a party to the Geneva Convention if they were willing to comply with its requirements. However, terrorists have no interest in treating people they capture with dignity. The only real reason for signing onto the Geneva Convention is because it is supposed to establish rules of war that also protect our soldiers should they be captured. Terrorists want nothing to do with those and thus should not be afforded protections that they do not deserve.

[Evie]

Torture for me is watching and listening to this man everyday, all day long and nothing of any significance coming from his lying lips. He is the most inexperience, uniformed egomaniac ever to sit in the oval office...and I thought Bill Clinton had that title, but this guy is over the top.

[Texas]

I find it the height of hypocrisy for this sanctimonious twit to get on his high horse about so called torture and immorality and values. This the man who thinks its A-OK to torture little babies born alive after botched abortions by tossing them over into a tin pan in a soiled laundry room and letting the gasp for breath till they die. Yes that is the case the prompted the Born Alive Infants Act to be brought before the Chicago legislature. Obama voted against protecting such little innocent American citizens three times and even actively prevented the bill from getting out of his committee at the time. Yet he's all high and mighty about making some hardened, murdering terrorist feel like they might not be able to breath for a few seconds, in order to protect this country. Obama is also a supporter of partial birth abortion in which the abortionist takes a small baby that is viable and pulls it out of its mothers' womb till just its little head is still inside and then "tortures" it by sticking a pair of scissors into its skull so it's head will flatten and it will be "born" dead. All with no anesthesia for the baby. Guess that kind of torture is OK for our great and godlike and most moral Dear Leader and apologizer in chief. Guess that little baby is more dangerous and less worthy of protection than a terrorist.

[Tim Fitzgerald]

Wow, every single previous commenter on this thread is completely out to lunch. Every single post, full of complete mistruths about Obama and his positions, combined with a seemingly pathological resentment for the man. On top of this, not the least bit of respect for human dignity and decency -- you are all apologists for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's regime of torturing people, which is a war crime under any basic standard of human conduct. I pray that your loved ones never undergo such brutal, totalitarian and disgusting treatment from those entrusted with authority.

[Jameson Quinn]

Since the conservative carpetbaggers seem to be out in force in this comment session, I would like to post a brief response. The most substantive point in that soup of gratuitous insults above is that Obama does not have the authority to decide if waterboarding is torture. I absolutely agree. There are several preexisting laws about torture, including the Geneva conventions (yes, the constitution defines treaties as part of the "supreme law of the land"). The appropriate place to decide if waterboarding meets the definition of torture under those laws is in a court of law, as Cheney, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzales, Rice, and their other co-conspirators face charges. If Obama truly believes that waterboarding is torture, he should have the courage to say that he supports bringing such a case, and let the cards fall where they may. And if you believe that waterboarding and the other "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the Bush administration are so clearly not torture, then you should not fear such a case, because they will be acquitted by courts (which, you must admit, have been packed by Republican appointees over 20 of the last 28 years.)

[Leigha Smith]

WATER BOARDING IS ABSOLUTELY WRONG AND ANYONE WHO DOES IT SHOULD BE IN PRISON FOR LIFE HOW WHOULD YOU LIKE IT IF IT WAS YOU GETTING THAT DONE TO YOU OR TO YOUR MOM OR DAD OR FAMILY MEMBER !!.; SOME OF THE PICTURES ON THE INTERNET ARE HORRIBBLEE NEVER IS IT OKAY TO DO THAT TO ANYONE!! EVER THIS IS A DISGRACE AND IS THE WORST THING AMERICA HAS EVER DONE..!! VOLENCE IS DEFINATLY NOT THE ANSWER IM SO IRRITATED AND MAD IDK HOW TO LET IT OUT I AM SOOO MAD AT AMERICA AND THERE ARMY FOR THIS ONE..THAT JUST ISN'T RIGHT AND IM GOING TO FIGHT AGAINST IT UNTIL I KNOW IM HEARD AND IT STOPS!!!!!!!!!!!!