US will not bring back waterboarding, lawmaker says

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Ont.

Regardless of what President-elect Donald Trump wishes, the U.S. would not reinstitute waterboarding, high-profile American lawmaker John McCain said Saturday.

McCain made the remarks at the annual Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada.

“I don’t give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do or anybody else wants to do,” McCain said, as reported by The Associated Press (AP). “We will not waterboard. We will not do it.”

The statement by the leading Republican was made during a panel discussion and was applauded by the audience, POLITICO reported.

During the recent American presidential campaign, Trump, also a Republican, said repeatedly that harsher methods must be instituted against terrorists and those suspected of terrorist activity.

“We have to fight fire with fire,” Trump said in June, with tactics used to “fight so viciously and violently” against Daesh, POLITICO reported. In February, Trump said he would use interrogation techniques “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”.

But McCain told those at the Halifax forum that waterboarding is illegal under the Geneva Convention and was also banned by the U.S. Congress under law and signed off by President Barack Obama last year.

McCain, chairman of the U.S. Armed Services Committee, said any move to bring back banned forms of torture would result in an immediate court challenge.

He was tortured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War and said extreme torture does not work. As well, if the United States used extreme torture, it would damage its credibility, the AP reported.

“What does it say about America if we’re going to inflict torture on people?” McCain asked.