Here is a partial transcript of the Giuliani interview with Al Hunt on Bloomberg TV. This is from The Huffington Post:
MR. HUNT: Let me try a couple of national security questions. Waterboard. You have noted the Congress has not outlawed it, and that you say it's not necessarily torture; it depends on the circumstances. John McCain says you are wrong and he says you haven't served in the military and have no experience in the conduct of warfare. Do you know more about torture than John McCain?
MR. GIULIANI: I can't say that I do but I do know a lot about intensive questioning and intensive questioning techniques. After all, I have had a different experience than John. John has never been - he has never run city, never run a state, never run a government. He has never been responsible as a mayor for the safety and security of millions of people, and he has never run a law enforcement agency, which I have done.
Now, intensive questioning works. If I didn't use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than it is. Intensive question has to be used. Torture should not be used. The line between the two is a difficult one.
Now let's go with this October 25, 2007 New York Times story on Guiliani talking about torture:
At a town hall meeting here last night, Rudolph W. Giuliani expanded upon his views of torture. Here is a transcript of the exchange.
Linda Gustitus, who is the president of a group called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, began her question by saying that President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey (who happens to be an old friend of Mr. Giuliani’s) had “fudged” on the question of whether waterboarding is toture.
“I wanted to ask you two questions,’’ she said. “One, do you think waterboarding is torture? And two, do you think the president can order something like waterboarding even though it’s against U.S. and international law?’’
Mr. Giuliani responded: “O.K. First of all, I don’t believe the attorney general designate in any way was unclear on torture. I think Democrats said that; I don’t think he was.’’
Ms. Gustitus said: “He said he didn’t know if waterboarding is torture.”
Mr. Giuliani said: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is. Because I’ve learned something being in public life as long as I have. And I hate to shock anybody with this, but the newspapers don’t always describe it accurately.”
[....]
“And I see, when the Democrats are talking about torture, they’re not just talking about even this definition of waterboarding, which again, if you look at the liberal media and you look at the way they describe it, you could say it was torture and you shouldn’t do it. But they talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I’m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That’s plain silly. That’s silly.’’
“That comes from people who have never investigated a real criminal case, never investigated organized crime. You know how I put hundreds of Mafia people in jail? And I helped to put thousands in Italy in jail? You know how I did it? I did it by electronic surveillance and aggressive questioning. None of them wanted to give me the information. They didn’t walk into my office and say, ‘I want to tell you about all of those Mafia murders…”
“They got ‘em because we arrested them, we got very significant charges on them, and we questioned them for long, long periods of time. With very aggressive techniques.
Then there is this June 27, 2007 New York Times story where Giuliani refuses to admit that waterboarding is torture:
[Giuliani] said he did not think that waterboarding, in which a detainee or prisoner is strapped with his feet above his head, gagged and made to think he is drowning, was necessary.
First used in the Spanish Inquisition, the method is widely considered torture by human rights groups. The procedure had been on a list of approved ''enhanced interrogation techniques'' used by the United States on terror suspects, although the Central Intelligence Agency has left it off a proposal for an updated set of rules on permissible techniques. Mr. Giuliani, who did not directly answer the question when it came up at a recent Republican debate, told reporters at a news conference that information could be gathered without going to such extremes.
''I think you can do it without something like waterboarding,'' he said after being pressed. He was quick to say he thought that interrogation needed to be aggressive, but likened what he meant to more traditional means of obtaining information.
''I think putting people under some degree of pressure is done all the time,'' Mr. Giuliani said. ''Police departments do it. I did it to get information from the Mafia,'' a reference to his work as a federal prosecutor before he was elected mayor of New York.
And finally, here is this November 3, 2007 New York Times story summing up the GOP candidates' views on torture:
[In the] 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.
Not only do the three candidates refuse to rule out waterboarding and other techniques that have been condemned, but they also believe the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, needs to remain open, and they back the practice of extraordinary rendition, in which terrorism suspects are sent for questioning to other countries, including some accused of torture.
[....]
Mr. Giuliani often frames the threat of terrorism in graphically personal terms, telling crowds that Islamic extremists “hate you” and want to come to the United States and “kill you.” In that vein, he has been perhaps the most forceful in suggesting that the president must be able to take extraordinary steps to combat terrorist threats.
“I think the president has to retain ultimate authority to be able to deal with terrorism in a way that’s different than dealing with an armed combatant from a nation state,” Mr. Giuliani said in a recent interview.
There is a pattern here in Giuliani's stance on torture. First, Giuliani refuses to answer whether waterboarding is considered a form of torture. Look at how Giuliani shifted the definition of waterboarding as torture on blaming the liberal media for defining waterboarding as torture, in response to Gustitus' question. Giuliani doesn't want to say what techniques are to be defined as torture. At the same time, Giuliani continues to advocate that the president must be given "intensive questioning techniques" in order to interrogate suspected terrorists in the Great War on Terror. Giuliani even claims that he used these "intensive questioning techniques" against Mafia suspects in New York. Does Giuliani ever specifically define what these "intensive questioning techniques" are? As far as I can tell, he hasn't. And since Giuliani refuses to define waterboarding as torture, we can only guess as to whether Giuliani really believes that waterboarding should be placed in the "Intensive Questioning Techniques" Catagory--and that we should be waterboarding Mafia suspects!
Rudy Giuliani is about as nutty as a Christmas fruitcake. This country can't take this tinpot thug as president, not after the eight years of a previous bully we've had under George W. Bush.
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