"If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective. It gained information for our country, and I - and I also would like to say that today, under Barack Obama, he is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA. You need to understand that today, today we - it - when we - when we interdict a terrorist on the battlefield, we have no jail for them. We have nowhere to take them. We have no CIA interrogation anymore. It is as though we have decided we want to lose in the war on terror under President Obama. That’s not my strategy. My strategy will be that the United States will be victorious in the war on terror."
Nov. 12, 2011 Michele Bachmann

"GARRETT: Mr. Cain, of course you’re familiar with the long - running debate we’ve had about whether waterboarding constitutes torture or is an enhanced interrogation technique. In the last campaign, Republican nominee John McCain and Barack Obama agreed that it was torture, and should not be allowed legally, and that the Army Field Manual should be the methodology used to interrogate enemy combatants. Do you agree with that or do you disagree, sir?

CAIN: I agree that it was an enhanced interrogation technique.

GARRETT: And then you would support it as president?

GARRETT: You would return...

CAIN: Yes.

GARRETT: ... to that policy?

CAIN: I would return to that policy. I don’t see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique."
Nov. 12, 2011 Herman Cain

"We diminish our standing in the world and the values that we project, which include liberty, democracy, human rights and open markets, when we torture. We should not torture. Waterboarding is torture. We dilute ourselves down like a whole lot of other countries, and we lose that ability to project values that a lot of people in corners of this world are still relying on the United States to stand up for."
Nov. 12, 2011 Jon Huntsman

"‘Enhanced interrogation' as some prefer to call it, has been used throughout history, usually by despotic governments, to cruelly punish or to extract politically useful statements from prisoners. Governments that do these things invariably bring shame on themselves.

In addition, information obtained under duress is incredibly unreliable, which is why it is not admissible in a court of law. Legally valid information is freely given by someone of sound mind and body. Someone in excruciating pain, or brought close to death by some horrific procedure is not in any state of mind to give reliable information, and certainly no actions should be taken solely based upon it.

For these reasons, it is illegal in the United States and illegal under Geneva Conventions. Simulated drowning, or water boarding, was not considered an exception to these laws when it was used by the Japanese against US soldiers in World War II. In fact, we hanged Japanese officers for war crimes in 1945 for water boarding. Its status as torture has already been decided by our own courts under this precedent. To look the other way now, when Americans do it, is the very definition of hypocrisy...

The government's own actions and operations in torturing people, and in acting on illegally obtained and unreliable information to kill and capture, are the most radicalizing forces at work today, not any religion, nor the fact that we are rich and free. The fact that our government engages in evil behavior under the auspices of the American people is what poses the greatest threat to the American people, and it must not be allowed to stand."
May 26, 2009 Ron Paul

"Yeah. Let me just address Congressman Paul. And I - Congressman, I - I respect that you wore the uniform of our country. But - in 1972, I volunteered to serve the United States Air Force. And the idea that we have our young men and women in combat today, Senator, where there are people who would kill them in a heartbeat, under any circumstance, use any technique that they can, for us not to have the ability to try to extract information from them, to save our young people's lives, is a travesty. This is war. That's what happens in war. And I am for using the techniques, not torture, but using those techniques that we know will extract the information to save young American lives. And I will be for it until I die."
Nov. 12, 2011 Rick Perry

"WALLACE: Well let me ask you all directly, this is going to be another raising of your hands and you didn’t have answer this specifically Congressman Paul, raise your hand if you would support a resumption of water boarding under any circumstances.

SANTORUM: Under certain circumstances or any circumstances?

WALLACE: Under certain circumstances.

SANTORUM: Certain or any?

WALLACE: Under any circumstances that you could imagine, not all.

SANTORUM: Sure…

WALLACE: So just to declare the three of you under individual case by case basis would support water boarding, Congressman Paul you would not?

PAUL: No, I would not. Because you don’t achieve anything.

SANTORUM: Well it’s just simply not true Ron, I mean the fact is that what we found is that some of this information that we find out that led to Osama Bin Laden actually came from these enhanced interrogation techniques.

PAUL: Not true.

SANTORUM: And by the way we wouldn’t have been able to launch a raid into Pakistan to get Osama Bin Laden if we weren’t in Afghanistan."
May 5, 2011 Rick Santorum