Patriot Act. Iraq War. Keystone XL. Wall Street.

[Ichingcarpenter]

41. Torture

In new her memoir about her time helming State, “Hard Choices,” Clinton adds: “There was no denying that our country’s approach to human rights had gotten somewhat out of balance” after the Bush administration. She also praised Obama’s order “prohibiting the use of torture or official cruelty,” using the term the Bush administration refused to use for the harsh interrogation tactics.

During the 2008 Democratic primary, however, torture was a minor issue adjacent to the central disagreement on the Iraq War. Clinton, to the right of the rest of the field on foreign policy, took a more nuanced view on torture than some of her competitors, like then-Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The two challengers opposed the use of torture in all cases, but Clinton at first carved out an exception for a ticking time bomb scenario. “In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the president,” she told the New York Daily News in 2007.

In an editorial board meeting, she added that there “are very rare” circumstances when an exception to the no torturing rule would be needed, and “if they occur, there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing it.”

Obama attacked her on the issue in a late January 2008 speech in Denver, suggesting her position on torture even put her to the right of the then-presumed GOP nominee John McCain, who opposed the harsh tactics after being tortured in Vietnam.

But by then, Clinton had changed her position. When asked about a ticking time bomb scenario during a debate in September 2007, she categorically ruled out the use of torture. “It cannot be American policy, period,” she said.


http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/where-hillary-clinton-torture

She evolved after everyone said she was wrong