The GOP's last presidential nominee took a moment today to criticize the party's current White House candidates for their stances on waterboarding.

During Saturday night's CBS-National Journal debate in South Carolina, which focused on foreign policy and national security, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann both defended the practice of waterboarding when asked about it.

"Yes, I would return to that policy. I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique," Cain said.

Bachmann agreed, accusing President Obama of letting "the ACLU run the CIA":

If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective. It gained information for our country. And I -- and I also would like to say that today, under Barack Obama, he is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA You need to understand that today -- today we -- it -- when we -- when we interdict a terrorist on the battlefield, we have no jail for them. We have nowhere to take them. We have no CIA interrogations anymore. It is as though we have decided we want to lose in the War on Terror under President Obama. That's not my strategy. My strategy will be that the United States will be victorious in the War on Terror.

Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul dissented against the use of waterboarding before the conversation turned to targeted assassinations -- which both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich said they support.

McCain, a former prisoner of war who endured torture himself, has long opposed the Bush administration's so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

Tweet from @SenJohnMcCain

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