Chris Christie Not Ruling Out Waterboarding

— -- Chris Christie will not rule out waterboarding as a method of acquiring intelligence because he doesn’t believe it’s a form of torture, the New Jersey governor said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“We need to do whatever we need to do to get actionable intelligence within the Constitution,” Christie said today.

Christie said he doesn’t believe waterboarding constitutes torture because it was conducted in 2002-03 under U.S. Department of Justice guidance that the action was “lawful and constitutional.”

But the United Nations says waterboarding qualifies as a form of torture. It was used by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks to interrogate several suspected terrorists, but President Obama banned it in 2009.

Christie faulted Obama and Hillary Clinton for second-guessing the practice.

Waterboarding entails placing a cloth over someone’s head and pouring water over the cloth to simulate drowning. It is generally used in an effort to obtain information or intelligence from the person in question.

GOP candidate Donald Trump has outwardly called for using waterboarding as a form of interrogation, saying on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” last month that he would “absolutely” reinstate it as a form of interrogation.