Bush expresses no tolerance for U.S. torture

President Bush expressed a no-tolerance stance on the use of torture by the United States in the war on terrorism in an exclusive wide-ranging interview with NBC News anchor Brian Williams, broadcast Monday.

Responding to a question from Williams on whether the United States can "be definitively against torture," Bush was adamant in his opposition to the practice.

“We are, and we will be at home and abroad," Bush said.

“And we're working with both Senator [John] McCain and Congressman Duncan Hunter,” he said. McCain, a prisoner of war who was tortured in Vietnam, said on the Dec. 4 broadcast of NBC's “Meet the Press” that he will not drop demands that the White House agree with his proposed ban on the use of torture to extract information from suspected terrorists.

The White House said previously it could not accept restrictions that might prevent interrogators from gaining information vital to the nation’s security, and it threatened a presidential veto of any bill that contained the McCain language.

‘Interrogate without torture’
But in his interview with Williams, Bush appeared to moderate that posture.

“We want to make sure that we're in a position to be able to interrogate without torture,” Bush said. “The American people expect us to do that which we can do within international law, and our own declaration of supporting the premises of international law is what I really meant to say — to protect us. I mean, if they know something, we need to know it. And we think we can find it without torturing people.”

The president addressed a spectrum of other topics in the interview, including progress in the Iraq war, relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the state of the economy and the way he gets the daily news.

Williams' day with the president began with an interview in the Oval Office. From there, he traveled on Air Force One with Bush to Philadelphia, where the president met with members of the World Affairs Council, addressing them on the topic of Iraq.

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