Donald Trump’s stunning advocacy of torture is the latest sign that the candidate has gone off the dangerous edge of his own flat-earth platform. He, and much of the rest of the GOP field of presidential candidates, appear hell bent on confirming the world’s worst possible views of what Americans are like.

Of course, torture is illegal. It’s considered illegal under U.S. law, and under our international obligations. And the fact that Trump doesn’t mind trumpeting his own more sadistic tendencies is a dismal indication of how low American political debate has fallen.

Here’s just a bit of the reporting on and reaction to his pro-war crimes campaign.

“Trump and Cruz idiotically refuse to face the facts about torture,” from The Guardian via Raw Story.

There was once a consensus that torture was immoral; even today, any sensible person knows torture is of little use if you want accurate information. Yet the current crop of Republican presidential candidates have been trying to outbid one another with promises of barbarism: Senator Ted Cruz confirmed that he favours simulated drowning, which he classifies as an “enhanced interrogation technique” (EIT) that falls short of torture. (The Spanish Inquisition was rather more honest, and called it tortura del agua.) “The Donald” immediately trumped his rival : he would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”.

“Trump’s call to bring back torture alarms professional interrogators,” McClatchyDC.

Hard-nosed interrogators who say they’ve thwarted terror attacks in the United States by extracting key information from suspects have a message for Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, who’s vowing to bring back waterboarding and even harsher questioning techniques if elected president:

Don’t do it.

“Trump’s Impeachable Offense,” truth dig.

First, the federal Torture Act stipulates that if an American soldier, CIA officer, or anybody else acting on behalf of the government waterboards a prisoner, he risks up to 20 years imprisonment. The McCain-Feinstein Amendment Congress passed last year reiterated the ban on torture, including waterboarding.

Second, our country is a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Waterboarding a prisoner is against international law and could subject the torturer — or the person ordering or approving the torture — to international sanctions, including prosecution in international courts.

“CIA would refuse to comply with Trump’s torture order, former officials say,” Newsweek via RawStory.

Former CIA and FBI interrogators have said publicly that such measures not only violate Geneva Convention prohibitions on torture, but are not as effective in the long run as breaking down prisoners with other techniques. Frazier Thompson, who heads the federal unit that interrogates key terrorism suspects, added his voice to that message this week, telling NPR that “rapport-based techniques elicit the most credible information.”

“Normalizing torture one interview at a time,” Digby’s Hullabaloo.

I’m sickened, literally, whenever I hear Trump say this stuff and get huge cheers. but why wouldn’t he? The media doesn’t see it as a problem. At this point I don’t know what depravity Trump could recommend to deal with terrorism that would make the press confront him to his face. It’s true they did get worked up about his making fun of a disabled reporter, which was revolting, so that’s promising. But they have a ways to go.

“Draft-Dodger Trump Said Sleeping Around Was My ‘Personal Vietnam’“, The Daily Beast

In a 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Trump talked about how he had been “lucky” not to have contracted diseases when he was sleeping around.

“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era,” Trump said in a video that resurfaced Tuesday on Buzzfeed, “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”