Obama: GOP candidates "wrong" on waterboarding
President Obama was in Hawaii Monday kicking off an international economic summit -- and trying to avoid getting involved in election-year politics. But with his foreign policy record under fire from Republican candidates, the President vigorously defended his record, as CBS News correspondent Norah O'Donnell reports.
During the CBS News/National Journal debate Saturday night, Mitt Romney called Iran the president's greatest foreign policy failure.
"Look, one thing you can know -- and that is if we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon," Romney said. "And if we elect Mitt Romney, if you'd like me as the next president, they will not have a nuclear weapon."
In a news conference, the President suggested Romney was naive.
"You take a look at what we've been able to accomplish in mobilizing the world community against Iran over the last three years and it shows steady, determined, firm progress in isolating the Iranian regime," Obama told O'Donnell. "Now, is this an easy issue? No. Anybody who claims it is either politicking or doesn't know what they're talking about."
The GOP candidates also drew attention Saturday for their views on the controversial use of waterboarding, heard in the following exchange:
Herman Cain: I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique.
Major Garrett: Congresswoman -- Congresswoman Bachmann, your opinion on this question that our emailer asked?
Michele Bachman: If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective. It gained information for our country.
The president wasted no time calling his opponents uninformed.
"Let me just say this: they're wrong," the president said. "And anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that's not something we do. Period."
President Obama gets strong approval ratings from Americans in the polls for his handling of foreign policy. But it's the president's record on the economy where he struggles. And that's what this nine-day trip through Asia is all about -- trying to boost world trade to stimulate the American economy.
