While some members of his party have attempted to defend the horrifying revelations in the torture report by insisting that abusing detainees was necessary to keep Americans safe (despite a lot of evidence to the contrary), Representative Peter King is taking a different approach. To hear the Long Island congressman tell it, the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques weren’t half as bad as everyone is making them out to be.
Here, via BuzzFeed, is what King said on a Wednesday morning radio broadcast:
“I don’t believe these are torture at all. For instance waterboarding, there were medical personnel present during the whole time. It creates tremendous discomfort there’s no doubt about it. It creates tremendous fear, but the fact is there was no lasting damage to these people and we got information from them, which is very helpful,” King Told W-CBS in New York.
“We’re not talking about anyone being burned or stabbed or cut or anything like that. We’re talking about people being made to stand in awkward in positions, have water put into their nose and into their mouth. Nobody suffered any lasting injuries from this.”
While it’s true that the 500-page report doesn’t seem to contain anything about people being burned, stabbed, or cut, it does feature plenty of broken bones, rectal-feeding, and a man who froze to death after being left half-naked on a concrete floor. (And remember: That’s just the stuff that was released to the public.) Perhaps Representative King didn’t have a chance to read those sections. Or maybe the man who once un-ironically called President Obama’s decision to wear a beige suit “inexcusable” is just a big troll.
