rights which are protected by the international conventions that the united states not only joined but for the most part authored. your reaction? my reaction is the same as leo theoharris who was a pilot shot down, a pilot, and said this week that waterboarding is not torture, and he also holds the medal of honor and as did bud day and subs subsequently made it clear that he does not believe that wa the terboarding is torture. and so if waterboarding is performed against an american by isis, is it or the cur? he is not going to be waterboarded, he is going to have his head cut off. and why don t you have chuck, you are trying to come
rights which are protected by the international conventions that the united states not only joined but for the most part authored. your reaction? my reaction is the same as leo theoharris who was a pilot shot down, a pilot, and said this week that waterboarding is not torture, and he also holds the medal of honor and as did bud day and subs subsequently made it clear that he does not believe that wa the terboarding is torture. and so if waterboarding is performed against an american by isis, is it or the cur? he is not going to be waterboarded, he is going to have his head cut off. and why don t you have chuck, you are trying to come up with hypotheticals, but when
it. why? it s a little more complicated than that. the report and the justice department inquiry went on at the same time. so we weren t able to interview the cia. so we thought that it was important to get materials that could be verified and documented. so we looked at the communications that cia officers were making in realtime about torture. now, during that period, everybody knew that we were having this inquiry, and certainly none of the people writing op-eds have come forward and said oh, we would have liked to be interviewed at that time, suffice it to say i ll speak for myself and my colleagues, we would be happy to have talked to them. do you think there should be criminal prosecutions? the justice department has been clear with respect to that that there are not going to be. i hope they ll review the new facts. but you want them to change their mind? i want them to review the new facts. but what i m especially troubled by is john brennan, on thursday, really open
which is the video image you see from the pentagon, torture is something we feel directly and personally and we think is morally wrong. reporter: but there is nothing antiseptic about a missile that hits a village. so as officials do the rounds to admonish the previous administration for condoning the secret torture program, they will do well to keep in mind that old saying about glass houses and stones. richard engel is in studio with me now. richard, first of, it s good to have you stateside. good to be here. december visit here. what s creating more terrorists? the bush interrogation program or obama s drone program? creating more terrorists? yeah. it s very hard to know. people are radicalized there s worry that both do that. that both can radicalize people. there s a whole history of why people are being radicalized. it goes back to u.s. support for israel, what s considered to be a war against islam. but the drone war is certainly
receives authorization, pushes a button, and a small missile is fired. but some are asking whether years from now we ll debate drones the way we re debating torture. the use of these unmanned aerial vehicles that you refer to as drones in the counterterrorism effort has done tremendous work to keep this country safe. reporter: the cia s clandestine fleet of armed drones has become central to its counterterrorism mission. the secretive nature of the program means no one can tell for sure how many of the estimated 3500 people killed mostly in pakistan and yemen were insurgents and how many were innocent civilians. in u.s. public opinion, there is greater support for killing people than torturing them. reporter: why? it s hard to know why. i think we believe that individuals we can see with this high technology precise discriminate weapons platform is better at identifying who they are. but in fact, most of the individuals who we kill, we have