The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.And here I'm sure I've opened Pandora's box on torture comments, however, when it comes to terrorists, my motto is "Whatever it takes."
Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”
According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”
KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.
After KSM was captured by the United States, he was not initially cooperative with CIA interrogators. Nor was another top al Qaeda leader named Zubaydah. KSM, Zubaydah, and a third terrorist named Nashiri were the only three persons ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. (Additional terrorist detainees were subjected to other “enhanced techniques” that included slapping, sleep deprivation, dietary limitations, and temporary confinement to small spaces -- but not to water-boarding.)
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Whatever it takes
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2 comments:
I'm pretty certain that the terrorist wouldn't show any mercy towards an "infidel", especially an American.
Why should we extend it to them?
I was waterboarded in SERE school in 1995. The reason that's relevant is because it is a legal precedent. Not only was I was waterboarded in SERE school, but also hundreds if not thousands of other Sailors and Marines have been waterboarded and have set this legal precedent that it is a safe legal technique when administered properly.
If it's legal to be administered on me, then how can it be ILLEGAL when administered to an enemy combatant as an interrogation technique?
Yes it may be immoral. Yes it is of questionable strategic intelligence value. Yes it has invigorated our enemies. Maybe it should never have been used. But Illegal??? Um no.
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