Carly Fiorina Would Like A Shot At Torturing Islamics, Please

Don't call it torture. Call it nostalgia

Continuing her fact-free Git Tuff stance on national defense in last week's debate -- the Sixth Fleet hasn't shrunk, a few thousand extra troops in Germany would mean nothing, and there's already a new missile defense system in Poland -- Carly Fiorina is now standing up for the CIA's torture program under the GW Bush administration, never mind that the Senate Intelligence Committee determined that it was run by idiots -- not only did torture not result in actionable intelligence, it also led intelligence agencies on wild goose chases when torture victims gave false reports in hopes of ending their mistreatment. But we like to get tough, so Carly's excited about pretend-drowning some Muslims, for America.

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In an interview with Yahoo News, Fiorina rejected the Intelligence Committee report and insisted that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques helped “keep our nation safe”:

“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.”

Fiorina ignored the inconvenient fact that FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified in 2009 that he had obtained high quality information from al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah using conventional, non-coercive interrogation techniques, but that once the CIA began waterboarding Zubaydah, no additional useful information was obtained.

Fiorina dismissed the Senate report as "disingenuous" and claimed that it "undermined the morale of a whole lot of people who dedicated their lives to keeping the country safe.” Regardless of whether their war crimes actually did keep us safe. Which they didn't, BUT WE LIKE TORTURING BAD GUYS. We don't want a president who talks about reality, we want a president who'll promise that we'll be so tough on terrorists that no one will ever be a terrorist again. Besides, if we do it, it's not torture. We're the good guys, remember?

Given that Fiorina is continuing to grow in popularity among Republican primary voters despite being a lying liar who keeps telling lies, it's not especially surprising that her credentials as a tough national security hawk are also largely bullshit, too.

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[ Yahoo News via TPM ]