Donald Trump vows to "strengthen" laws to allow torture, waterboarding

[groundloop]

Source: CBS News

Republican front-runner Donald Trump said he would "strengthen" laws to allow for the use of torture if he were elected president.

<snip>

"We have an enemy in the Middle East that's chopping off heads and drowning people in massive steel cages," Trump told Dickerson, speaking of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. "We have an enemy that doesn't play by the laws. You could say laws, and they're laughing. They're laughing at us right now. I would like to strengthen the laws so that we can better compete."

"You know, it's very tough to beat enemies that don't have any, that don't have any restrictions, all right? We have these massive restrictions. Now, I will always abide by the law, but I would like to have the law expanded," Trump said.

"I happen to think that when you're fighting an enemy that chops off heads, I happen to think that we should use something that's stronger than we have right now. Right now, basically, waterboarding is essentially not allowed, as I understand it. ... I would certainly like it to be, at a minimum, at a minimum to allow that."

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-vows-to-strengthen-laws-to-allow-torture-waterboarding-election-2016/

---

Trump also discounted the notion that American prisoners would be treated more harshly if we allowed torture. And this is from someone who obtained deferments to avoid Vietnam.

[Nyan]

1. Torture. Really. We're going down this road again?

How did it turn out for us the last time we did this? I forget.

[AgerolanAmerican]

4. They never stopped, really

There's a famous "black site" in Chicago that was exposed a year ago already and it's still operating unchanged and unhindered. And that's where they bring US citizens.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/26/a_black_site_in_chicago_police

[w0nderer]

5. can't remember last time you did it..i seem to remember nothing happened

but last time someone did it to you you hung them for war crimes

then again they were either 'slant eyes yellow bastard chinks'
or 'blue eyed blond aryan jerrie nazies'

oops
the world remembers
do you?

[Nyan]

6. Yes I remember. I was aghast at the whole thing.

If he becomes the president, I swear the whole world is gonna turn against us.

[w0nderer]

10. I've been waterboarded (POT...part of training)

also had a korean sponge bath
(salt water, sponges and electricity) and other things (mild (rubber hose cracked bones not broken) beatings ) also POT (other army other place other time)

anyone calling it 'college prank' or mild should experience it, and i'll be ok to supply it to them

if Trump wants and dares to experience it i'm sure we can round up 10 or so people here at DU that'll accommodate
i will happily volunteer if it'll teach him anything



if he becomes president...it might be a good thing
perhaps..just maybe liberals (not middle road, not neo libs, not 3rd wayers) LIBERALS might learn
"THIS was a bad idea"

i doubt it....since no lesson was learned from Reagan, bush 1, and bush 2
so....ahem...i doubt it..but the world can hope

[sulphurdunn]

2. Trump supporters better be careful

what they wish for, or someday, some of them may find themselves strapped to the very waterboards they were so delighted to have used on their enemies.

[underpants]

3. Everyone is laughing at us right now

and it ain't because of laws

[Sunlei]

7. The Donald should build a hospitial/clinic, one of his closed casinos would do.

I bet he could plan out in a week, bring in some of those Doctors waiting to get into USA on HB visa.

If Trumps gonna be the scapegoat for the torture loving republicans, he should ramp the attacks-up to American healthcare hating republicans.

[GliderGuider]

8. Be this guy...

[William Seger]

9. "... so that we can better compete" with terrorists!?!

This is no ordinary asshole.

[lastlib]

20. He wants to compete with evil?

Do it on your own time, Donito. NOT ours! EFF You!

[William Seger]

21. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we."

"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
--George W. Bush

[Botany]

11. Does Trump even know that we hung some Japanese @ the end of WW II for waterboarding?

"After World War II, we tried, convicted, and, in some cases, executed Japanese soldiers for war crimes that included charges of waterboarding."
— Bobby Scott on Tuesday, December 9th, 2014 in a news release.

snip

The claims harken back to the mid to late 1940s when officials of the Axis powers were tried and convicted, and some executed, for a wide range of war crimes.

snip

During a 1947 war crimes trial in Yokohama, Wallach wrote that several officials of a Japanese prison camp were convicted of two incidents of strapping down U.S. prisoners and forcing water up their noses and in their mouths.

http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2015/jan/12/bobby-scott/bobby-scott-after-wwii-us-executed-japanese-war-cr/

[HereSince1628]

12. Not to break Godwin's Rule, but in this Trump is calling for a bit of enabling law

I don't say that to say Trump is a fascist or that he's an American version of Mousillini, or Franco...

I say that to remind everyone that Trump has just called for enabling power that would facilitate his presidency to be shaped to his personality and experience as an authoritarian CEO.

He can't get -that- enabling power without majority Congressional support. Regardless of Trump's potential for success at the ballot box for the presidency, every district in the country has the opportunity to deny Trump that sort of support. Now, strange things can and have happened in politics.

It's not completely out of the question that a nation that ripped up civil liberties with a PATRIOT ACT would enable authoritarian power with something like a law "To Fix Problems With Protecting The People and The Government." So we can't sleep walk around this...but, I do believe that while some districts would provide that support, most districts would not.

We still -do- have government with built in checks and balances to prevent the office of president from assuming plenary power even though that has been much abused in recent years.

Moreover, by seeming remarkable chance, the r's actually seem to still realize that -any- president with such power would put an end to the power elites that don't agree with him...which would be the end of their role as middlemen for the oligarchy as they know it.

[bemildred]

13. Well, there goes the CIA vote. nt

[tabasco]

14. I didn't spend a decade in the infantry fighting for a country that tortures.

We're supposed to be the good guys.

[William Seger]

16. "we're playing with two sets of rules: their rules and our rules"

Some of us thought that was the whole idea behind claiming the moral high ground, but I guess we need to "make America great again" by murdering innocent people in the most horrible way we can think of.

[kimbutgar]

15. Trump= hate

[LiberalLovinLug]

17. I think its too late

Fox's 24 show, along with hundreds of other shows and movies have glorified the idea of the ends justify the means. Add to that the conditioning that the good guys always win, torture saves the maiden in distress at the last minute etc.. I could see this coming. I think even among many Democrats now, if you asked them privately, would be more open to the idea of torture. Part of it is conditioning that anyone that is tortured is already some guilty terrorist, as seen on TV, who has already himself tortured and killed many other innocents and so "deserves" whatever he gets....whether he is guilty of that particular act they are torturing him for at the moment. When the opposite is true. Torture is used in corrupt right wing authoritarian states, to punish, to intimidate others. This is where it will inevitably lead. Union leaders, students, activists, artists, intellectuals. The pattern is there to see. Trump says 'I love the poorly educated' Oligarchs are bad enough. Oligarchs with the blessing to use torture are even worse.

[OnyxCollie]

18. This is what "looking forward" gets you.

Thanks, Obama.

[xocet]

23. No doubt. n/t

[xocet]

26. President Obama on Torture: "...Hopefully We Don't Do It Again In The Future."

In case anyone would like to see President Obama's recent remarks (August 1, 2014) on torture, here is the segment (about 4 minutes) of the White House video that deals with it:

http://vid1169.photobucket.com/albums/r509/TimOrmney/PresidentObamaonTortureetc_zpscc0e1e0c.mp4

This excerpt is from the longer video (about 48 minutes) of the press conference that is located here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2014/08/01/president-delivers-statement

"...Hopefully we don't do it again in the future..." is apparently all there is to say.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025325072

[OnyxCollie]

28. "Hopefully"

As if only divine intervention can prevent torture.

[wiggs]

19. It's pretty amazing that Trump can issue a proclamation, pull

something out of his a*s in front of a microphone, or tweet a one-sentence statement...and people take to their media of choice to analyze it, discuss the merits or lack thereof, compare it to history, etc.. I'm talking about not only pundits, journalists, and analysts but also bloggers and message boards.

I'm for exposing the shallowness of his ideas...but not from the standpoint that they are ideas worth discussing with a straight face. The place where Trump comes from is a couple of decades in the making...that one party has emphasized that governing means a lack of deep analysis, a defiance of history and logic, a reliance on lies, disassociation from reality, and denial of practicality. And these decades have waited for a guy like Trump to come along and play the game they created.

So it's ironic that the media spends so much time giving thought, history, and analysis to something forged from a denial of thought, history, and analysis. Before talking about Trumps proclamations, there should be a disclaimer at the beginning of every show or article that says the author is going to go through the motions of analysis but is aware that Trump ideas aren't meant for analysis. We should stop pretending.

I found this article interesting...not as much for the article but for the amazing reader comments that took the author to task and offered their own ideas re the Trump phenomenon. NYT articles are often surpassed by their reader comments, IMO. One reader:

"It's just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Republican Party's imposing their myopic views -- including religious and "moral" views* -- on the American public to Donald Trump, who thinks he can impose his views on everything on everyone.

Break it down all you want, into 4 or 40 supposed building blocks, but the fact is that the Republican Party created this monster. Its bones and sinews are the Party's dog-whistling racism, the election of unqualified ignoramuses for Congress, a refusal to compromise because undermining a sitting president is more important than working on behalf of the American people. Also, the decades of "trickle-down" where nothing trickled down; startling increases in the ratio between CEO to employee salaries; the dereliction of public education; the neglect of infrastructure. These last two are because Republicans don't want to pay taxes (after all, government is the problem) and now there is no one in their party brave enough to explain why they need to.

Republicans who bought the party line for decades are coming to see that it is not working. They've heard for so long that they need to take their country "back." They've believed it, and they are trying to take it back now -- if not exactly in the way the party elites would like."

Key word is "myopic". That's what has been required to be a republican and what is now required to be a Trump supporter or pundit who seriously thinks Trumps expositions should be carefully analyzed for feasibility.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/the-elements-of-trumpism.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Let me say that I hope Trump gets the nomination because I think he's nearing his expiration date and will be easy to defeat in the general by someone willing to ridicule his ideas, not debate them.

[blackspade]

22. We have no laws that "allow" torture at all.

They are war crimes.

What laws is this fucking charlatan going to 'strengthen?'

[awoke_in_2003]

24. Better compete?

What? So we can win at torture?

[Yavin4]

25. Dear "there's no difference between the parties" and "I won't support the Dem nominee" people...

please bookmark this thread. Thank you.

[groundloop]

33. So very true

[JoeyT]

37. Dear "There's no point prosecuting war crimes" people:

We told you so.

[Solly Mack]

27. It's not as if he wouldn't get away with. Just get the DOJ to write more

torture memos and say you did it in "good faith". If push comes to shove and photos are released, arrest and charge a "few bad apples". America will, once again, pretend it happened so long ago that it is all in the distant past, and we should just look ahead.

[xocet]

30. Calling John Yoo (et al)! Calling John Yoo! Please report to the Trump (White) House stat....

The new Bush-Cheney-Trump decoration is ready for anyone willing to follow their orders:

[Solly Mack]

31. Exactly. The Bush administration got away with torture/war crimes. Why wouldn't Trump?

Of course, given the love of hypocrisy some carry, some fool would try to explain how there is a difference between Bush torturing people and Trump doing it.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

29. Yep, make America ashamed again.

[WhiteTara]

32. Make that abandon laws.

[Red Mountain]

34. It would be interesting to see how that worked out on the world stage.....

Apart from the threat of arrest outside this country I wonder if Trump's business assets might be vulnerable to seizure.

That would change his tune.

GW and Cheney sure seem to avoid international travel.

[truthisfreedom]

35. Trump doesn't learn lessons from history.

He's just a game show host.

[Orsino]

36. "in the language of Orthanc, save means slay and help means harm."

The words of this jackass stand on their heads.

It's a stress position.

[olddad56]

38. does that mean Trump will be in favor of domestic torture?

like by the police to force confessions?

If I can imagine it, it can happen, especially under fascist rule.

[Cavallo]

39. I suspect police state is in there too.

Someone should tell his voters that fascists usually take away guns first. He's being silent about guns.

[sakabatou]

40. Personally, anyone who is pro-torture or upholds it, must go through it.