Torture '08: Leading Republicans All Support Water-Boarding

A central tenet of every leading Republican candidate's campaign for president is one simple and powerful idea: I alone can best defend the United States from the threat of terrorism.

And in recent weeks, three candidates, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred D. Thompson, have embraced some of the more controversial policies on the treatment of those suspected of supporting terrorism, backing harsh interrogation methods and refusing to rule out the use of waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique, on detainees.

Their public statements came as the debate over whether waterboarding is torture had threatened to derail the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general after he refused to call the technique illegal.

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