Free Republic

President Donald Trump said Friday that he will defer to the judgment of Defense Secretary James Mattis that torture and waterboarding should continue to be banned in the interrogations of terror suspects. "He has stated publicly that he does not necessarily believe in torture or waterboarding or however you want to define it," Trump said of Mattis, a retired Marine general who had commands in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I don't necessarily agree, but he [Mattis] will override because I'm giving him that power." "I'm going to rely on him" on so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," Trump said, though "I happen to...

Democrats are intensifying efforts to hold President Bush and his fellow Republicans accountable for missteps in the Iraq war, as they seek to exploit a potential GOP vulnerability heading into Congress' midterm election year. Outnumbered on Capitol Hill, Democrats are embracing the little power they have in the GOP-controlled House and Senate by using procedural techniques to highlight Iraq troubles and issue blistering critiques of Bush's war policies. At the same time, increasing numbers of Democrats are calling for the president to start withdrawing U.S. troops by year's end and are laying out their own timetables for pulling out of...