Republican presidential candidates Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann said at Saturday's foreign policy debate that they would renew the use of waterboarding, the controversial practice banned by President Barack Obama. "I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique," Cain said. His comments were met with loud cheers of support from the debate audience. Bachmann, meanwhile, called the practice "very effective" and said Obama "is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA." After the debate, Romney aides told CNN that he does not believe waterboarding is torture. But this issue doesn't divide neatly along party lines. During the debate candidates Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman outright opposed the practice. "Waterboarding is torture," Paul said. "It's really un-American to accept, on principle, that we will torture people that we capture." The next day both Sen. John McCain and President Obama criticized the pro-waterboarding rhetoric and reaffirmed their opposition to the practice.
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Three GOP presidential candidates say waterboarding is not a form of torture
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So which is it: Illicit torture or an acceptable interrogation practice? asks Loran Nordgren
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Nordgren: People who don't experience something can't estimate just how painful it is
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People who volunteer to experience waterboarding see it as torture, Nordgren says
Because most policymakers have never experienced waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation tactics for themselves (Sen. @placeholder aside), they must rely on their inexperienced intuitions about how painful these practices seem.