Richard Moore: Time to get down and dirty

Donald Trump says he would allow more than waterboarding when dealing with terror suspects.

Loathe that I may be to write this... Donald Trump may have one thing right.

I know, I know, I may need my head examined, but let's focus on one thing.

Should nations use torture to prevent terrorist attacks?

Most of you may probably say "No", but I'm halfway over the fence to the Don's side on this one.

I reckon if we asked the families of the people killed in the Brussels' attacks last week and I'd say almost all would back much harsher treatment of suspects.

Some, before the attacks, may have said "No" - that was until Islamic terrorists chose two soft targets to send suicide bombers to kill as many innocent people as they could.

The outrage in a Metro train carriage at Maalbeck - a central Brussels train station - left 10 people dead and dying amid twisted metal and a hail of nails and bolts used as shrapnel.

The train attack was close to the European Parliament building and, ironically, a couple of hundred metres from the Islamic Cultural Centre.

The attack at Zaventem Airport killed 14 people. Again suicide bomb vests packed with nails and bolts spread death and injury through the check-in area near the American Airlines desk.

More than 340 people were injured in both attacks, 101 remain in hospital and 62 in intensive care.

We went through the Zaventem Airport departure area less than a year ago on our way to Toulouse and that makes the attacks just a little closer to us.

These terrorist cowards have one plan in mind and that is to spread fear through the West and to hit civilians in all countries. They don't care who is killed or injured as long as there are a lot of them and it makes the TV news bulletins.

So how does the West counter such barbarity?

It has to be through high-quality intelligence work, people willing to work with governments and decisive retaliation when the masterminds of such attacks are revealed.

We should all rejoice when news comes through of successful airstrikes against the terror groups ISIS or al Qaeda.

Now in order to get the right information, our defenders may need to get their hands dirtier than many would like.

I guess it is a choice between keeping our principles, or stopping people dying.

Unfortunately when you are in a fight against people with no scruples or rules, you have to get down and dirty and match them otherwise you lose.

And here is where President Donald would come in.

He says he would allow more than waterboarding when dealing with terror suspects.

Waterboarding is a much-condemned-in-the-West technique where a terror suspect is nearly drowned by having water poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning.

I would not like that to happen to me, but then I'm not likely to associate myself with people who want to bomb shopping malls, trains or airports.

Trump has not said what else he would allow but, in order to save lives, I'm nearly on his side of the fence.

The jihadi war against the West is not a game. It is a battle to kill as many of us as they can.

We must get mentally tough to fight back.

- Richard@richardmoore.com

- Richard Moore is an awarding-winning Western Bay journalist and photographer.