Fox analyst: Americans not above torture, and shouldn't be David Edwards and Jason Rhyne

Published: Thursday December 13, 2007



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Print This Email This Americans aren't above resorting to torture to gain intelligence from suspected terrorists -- and it would be a mistake if they were, according to Fox News military analyst Col. David Hunt. Hunt, who appeared on the Fox and Friends morning program to discuss the CIA's admission that it destroyed at least two videotapes depicting severe interrogation techniques, described waterboarding as a devastatingly painful tactic that was a necessary evil of intelligence gathering. "There are instances where it works. I've had it done to me in training," said Hunt. "It's torture. It is an extremely dangerous thing. Your system shuts down." Asked by Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade if Americans were "better" than resorting to such practices, Hunt said he didn't think so. "First of all, I don't think we are," he said. "I think if we are, we shouldn't be. We're in a war with people who aren't...good men have to know how to do bad things to do good." Hunt, who says that he withstood his own waterboarding experience for a little over a minute and a half, described the practice as as intensely painful, but effective. "You are drowning. Not gonna. You are. You're gonna die," he said. "My point is we should have a discussion...if we as a nation want to do this, it has worked. But torture does not work all the time." Earlier in the segment, the colonel described the CIA's elimination of the interrogation tapes as a a mistake. "Stupid. Idiotic," he said of the decision. "How about number one, we don't tape stuff? I thought we learned that lesson a long time ago. I think its a reaction to Abu Ghraib, but it's wrong, they shouldn't have done it." This video is from Fox's Fox & Friends, broadcast on December 13, 2007.









