The US needs to be tough against terrorists, Republican presidential fruntrunner Donald Trump said today as he favoured restoring waterboarding and other types of interrogation techniques in the face of brutal killings by Islamic State militants.
"I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they'd do to us, what they're doing to us, what they did to James Foley when they chopped off his head. That's a whole different level and I would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation," he said in an interview to ABC News.
"Well, we have to be strong. They don't use waterboarding over there, they use chopping off people's heads. They use drowning people. I don't know if you've seen with the cages, where they put people in cages and they drown them in the ocean and they lift out the cage. And we're talking about waterboarding," Trump said.
If elected, he would bring strong anti-terror interrogation techniques back which were removed by President Barack Obama when he came into office in 2009, he said.
Trump, who is now leading all Republican presidential polls, had said he would consider closing mosques in the US. His rival Jeb Bush has called it a sign of weakness.
"Jeb Bush is a weak person and that's been defined very strongly. I mean, Jeb is a weak person who is a - you know, I call him a low energy person. That's what he is. I mean, call him anything you want, but Jeb is a person that will not solve a problem like this," he said.
"You have very, very tough people that you're dealing with. They only understand strength. They don't understand weakness. Somebody like Jeb, and others that are running against me - and by the way Hillary is another one," he said.
"I mean, Hillary is a person who doesn't have the strength or the stamina, in my opinion, to be President. She's not a strong enough person to be President," Trump said.
"When Syrians come in, or wherever they are, because we're not even sure that they're coming in from Syria, if they're going to come in, we have to be very, very vigilant. And a database would be fine for them and a watch list is fine. We have to watch and see what we're doing," he said reiterating that he is against Syrian refugees coming to the US.
Responding to a question, Trump said he does not want to close mosques, but would keep a watch on them.
"I don't want to close mosques, I want to surveil mosques. I want mosques surveilled. All I would do, certainly there are certain hot spots and everybody knows they're hot spots. And big material and good material, from what I understood, from a very good source, was coming out of those mosques," he said.
Waterboarding is a near-drowning interrogation technique in which a person is strapped head downwards on a sloping board or bench with the mouth and nose covered, while large quantities of water are poured over the face. It was used by the CIA in interrogations of a few 9/11 suspects.
