Rudy and torture

In my Washington Monthly piece I note that Rudy Giuliani has already indicated his support for quite a few of the Bush administration's most disturbing policies in the area of detention and interrogration:

"In 2006, Giuliani told the Wall Street Journal that he would probably keep the detention center at Guantanamo Bay open, saying that its conditions had been "grossly exaggerated." This year, at a New Hampshire town hall meeting, he refused to say whether the Bush administration had gone too far in denying the protection of the Geneva Conventions to terrorist suspects. Giuliani has also indicated that presidents have the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial. At a debate, he declared himself opposed to torture but refused to say whether he would outlaw waterboarding, instead offering that interrogators should perform "any method they can think of."

For most of those comments it's possible for Giuliani's supporters to argue that he was just speaking off the cuff to a reporter or voter, and that these statements don't necessarily reflect deeply held positions. I don't think that's true. Witness this exchange from at a campaign event in Iowa yesterday, in which Giuliani explicitly lays out a policy of officially sanctioned torture (emphases mine).

Questioner: "He [AG nominee Mukasey] said he didn't know if waterboarding is torture."

Giuliani: "Well, I'm not sure it is either. I'm not sure it is either. It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it's been defined in the media, it shouldn't be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that's the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn't be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is. Because I've learned something being in public life as long as I have. And I hate to shock anybody with this, but the newspapers don't always describe it accurately."
[snip]
“Now, on the question of torture. We should not torture. America should not stand for torture, America should not allow torture. But America should engage in aggressive questioning of Islamic terrorists who are arrested or who are apprehended. Because if we don’t we leave ourselves open to significant attack.”

“And the line between the two is very delicate and very difficult. But we can’t abandon aggressive questioning of people who are intent on coming here to kill us. Or killing us overseas. I think that that’s the point that the attorney general designate was trying to make.”

“And the powers of the president are pretty significant in protecting the national security of the United States. They always have been. So I think what he was also trying to do was protect the powers of the United States to deal with unforeseen circumstances like the hypothetical we were asked during one debate – I’ve forgotten which one: If there was a terrorist attack on an American city, and it was clear that there were all going to be additional attacks, some of them were going to be nuclear, and they were planned for the next couple of days and one of the people involved in it was arrested, and the head of the C.I.A. came to you and said we have to do certain things to get the information from him, would you authorize it? And I think most of us answered it, yes we would, we would authorize doing whatever we thought was the most effective to get that information.”

“The president has to have that kind of leeway. We’ve got to trust our president well enough to allow that. If we surround this so much with procedure, we’re going to have some unforeseen circumstance in which a president’s not going to feel comfortable making the right decision, particularly if you have the wrong person there. “

“So I think America should never be for torture. America should be against torture. It violates the Geneva Convention. [sic] Certainly when we’re dealing with armed combatants, we shouldn’t get near anything like that. There is a distinction, sometimes, when you’re dealing with terrorists. You may have to use means that are a little tougher.”