Donald Trump: It’s ok to kill militants’ families

White House hopeful would reinstate waterboarding if elected.

Tue, 08 Mar, 2016 - 00:00

Jill Colvin

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump says that if he became president, he would reverse laws that prohibit waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, arguing that banning them puts the US at a strategic disadvantage against Islamic State militants.

Trump has articulated a loose, but expansive set of principles, which, if enacted, would be a fundamental shift in the strategy the Obama administration has employed to fight violent extremism.

In addition to wanting to reinstate waterboarding, a technique that mimics the sensation of drowning, and “much more than that,” Trump has advocated the killing of militants’ wives and children, which appears in violation of international law.

“We have to play the game the way they’re playing the game,” Trump said in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, after he told an audience in Florida that he would fight to expand the laws that regulate interrogation.

“I would like to strengthen the laws,” he added, “so that we can better compete.”

Trump’s comments come as the US continues its fight against IS militants across the Middle East.

Trump has repeatedly pointed to the tactics used by the group, including public beheadings and drownings in locked cages, as evidence that the US needs to dramatically escalate the tactics it uses.

During a news conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, to mark his election wins, Trump refused, however, to articulate specifically which techniques he would like to add, despite repeated questions.

Instead, he said: “It’s very hard to be successful in beating someone when your rules are very soft and their rules are unlimited. They can do whatever they want to do.”

Pressed on why he believed waterboarding had been banned, Trump said the US was being “weak” by not employing the militants’ tactics.

“Because I think we’re weak — I think we’ve become very weak and ineffective. I think that’s why we’re not beating Isis. It’s that mentality,” he said, using an acronym for the militant group.

“Isn’t that what separates us from the savages?” host John Dickerson asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” answered Trump. “No, we have to beat the savages.”

“We have to play the game the way they’re playing the game. You’re not going to win if we’re soft and they’re — they have no rules,” he said.

In 2009, Obama issued an executive order saying all US government personnel and contractors — not just those in the military — are prohibited from using any interrogation techniques that aren’t in the Army Field Manual.

That was reaffirmed last June, when Republicans joined all 44 Senate Democrats in a 78-21 vote, months after a Senate intelligence committee report denounced brutal interrogation methods, arguing they had proven ineffective.