Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina told Yahoo News today that the CIA's use of waterboarding "kept our nation safe."
According to Fiorina, the use of torture was justified because it was the only way to obtain information that doesn't exist.
“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,” Fiorina told Yahoo News. “And I also believe that waterboarding was used when there was no other way to get information that was necessary.”
Our torture was supervised by medical personnel, she says. I guess that makes it okay.
To say that waterboarding was the only way to obtain the necessary information is a misnomer because waterboarding did not lead to information that prevented a single terrorist attack. The Senate Intelligence Committee released a 525 page report in 2014 dispelling any notion that torture was instrumental in protecting national security.
The idea that torture compelled suspects to spill information which prevented more attacks after 9/11 is a right wing fantasy and some may say it would be irrelevant even if it had.