Rubio: Time to Revisit Waterboarding

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Friday it’s time to revisit the issue of waterboarding – an interrogation technique authorized by President George W. Bush that has since been banned by President Barack Obama – in the wake of the successful operation to kill Osama bin Laden.

The U.S. government can learn from its success, just as much as it can learn from its mistakes, he said, the Tampa Tribune reported.

The Republican senator said he wasn’t endorsing waterboarding. But the great success of finding and killing the most wanted terrorist on the planet gives intelligence officials an opportunity to review what worked.

"We need to find out how this information was gathered," he said, referring to whether waterboarding — also known as simulated drowning — and other enhanced interrogation techniques favored by the Bush administration helped the CIA learn about the courier who eventually led to bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan.

"Again, this is not for the purposes of saying we were right and you were wrong, it's for understanding what works and what doesn't."

Rubio's spoke about the interrogation technique in a broad discussion about what effect, if any, the death of bin Laden will have on the missions of Tampa-based U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command.