Carl Higbie, a former Navy SEAL, and Pete Hegseth, a former Army infantry platoon leader, two combat veterans I greatly admire who are now frequent contributors to FOX News, just squared off in the political ring, where Carl is a Trump supporter and Pete a Cruz man. What caught my attention was when Sandra Smith asked them their opinion of waterboarding, an issue just raised by Hillary Clinton, who piously declared her absolute opposition to torture of terrorists to obtain information to abort future attacks like those in Belgium.

Higbie noted that waterboarding is inflicted on our military personnel as part of their training, preparing them for what they may face if captured, so what's the problem with using it on terrorists? Hegseth readily agreed, and then Higbie volunteered that he is agreeable to doing more than waterboarding if it saves innocent lives. Neither of these former warriors commented on the ignorance of Hillary's flat-out declaration that torture does not work, as I had been hoping they would. They know better.

For someone who wants to command our military forces, Hillary needs to get herself up to speed on very basic military matters rather than simply spouting liberal pieties. If torture doesn't work, then why are our troops trained very harshly to be prepared to resist it? If it doesn't work, then why spend all that time and money training, and why does the American military's Code of Conduct state this as its fifth rule (emphasis mine)?

5. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability, I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

I'd like Hillary to explain to the nation why our national guidelines for American military personnel who are captured recognize the reality that, unable to resist the pain of torture, even our bravest warriors may divulge more than the permitted name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. That's the meaning of that clause, to the utmost of my ability. It's recognition by the military that eventually, everyone talks if subjected to enough mistreatment. Then of course there's the question that if torture doesn't work, why do so many nations around this globe regularly employ it as an interrogation tool?

As an infantry NCO in Vietnam, I saw freshly captured Viet Cong prisoners punched, kicked, choked, and even electrically shocked with field telephones during battlefield interrogations, and every single one broke quickly and began giving up intelligence on their troop formations and placements. That was information that saved who knows how many American lives, perhaps even mine, and I never once felt regret as to how it was obtained. Following interrogation, we fed them C-Rations and evacuated them to our coastal bases, a far better fate than they faced from their own Vietnamese rivals, the ARVN, who simply shot them on the spot and left them to be buried by villagers.

So Hillary, despite your extensive combat experience in Bosnia, this old grunt is here to tell you that you don't have a clue what you're talking about when you say torture doesn't work. It may not be morally correct by American standards, but lady, I'm here to tell you: it does work, or it wouldn't have been going on since the first cave man, caught away from his clan, dropped his club and threw up his hands in surrender.