Ex-CIA Director and NSA chief Michael Hayden says Donald Trump's "enthusiasm" for waterboarding gives the outlawed interrogation technique "a bad name."
In a speech at an American Enterprise Institute event, Hayden slammed the GOP front-runner for endorsing waterboarding and "worse" as a punishment,
The Hill reports.
"His language on waterboarding was so bad that it actually gave waterboarding a bad name," Hayden said, The Hill reports.
"He's doing it with enthusiasm. We did it with regret. He's doing it because they deserve it. We never did it because they deserved it; we did it because we thought they knew something that we had a right to know in order to keep our citizens safe."
The practice is now illegal under U.S. law.
Trump has repeatedly said he'd use "waterboarding" and
"a hell of a lot worse" on suspected terrorists, and even suggested it might have prevented the Brussels bombings that killed dozens earlier this week,
telling CNN a Paris suspect arrested beforehand would have talked "a lot faster with the torture."
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