Originally Posted by BBQMan

To understand the use of water boarding, particularly in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, KSM, we need to look at the man. KSM was not just the architect of 9/11, he was in charge of ALL Al Qaeda operations worldwide. It was not what he had done/planned that we were interested in, although that list was extensive: the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the bombing of the nightclub in Bale, the attack on the USS Cole, the attacks of the US embassies in Africa, etc. He repeated bragged that with, "...this right hand I cut off the head of the Jew, Daniel Pearl".

The men and women of our CIA have much better things to do than try to recreate what has happened in the past - their job is to learn what is coming and they are professionals at that. KSM was the leader of all AQ ops and knew what was planned for the next decade: The destruction of the Sears tower using four tanker trucks - not just how, but who and when; the plan to blow up ten planes over the Atlantic on one day, (did you think the English discovered this without having any idea what might be underway?); the idea for a shoe bomber, the planned 9/11 equivalent attacks on LA, and the list goes on and on. We will never know how many attacks were thwarted by the information we got from him, but no less an authority that George Tennat has said that it was more valuable than the rest of the information brought in by the CIA and the FBI.

We know from what KSM told the CIA that Al Qaeda is working to obtain weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons and that they intend to use them against the United States first - Israel and Western Europe will follow. Imagine what ten, even small load nuclear weapons, exploded across cities in the United States would do to us. The fact that we could strike back one hundred times harder at the Muslim world is irrelevant. As the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has said,” Jews and Christians fear death, we embrace it."

Radical Islam is a new and different threat than we have ever faced before. We are used to dealing with enemies that are ‘rational’ in our framework of thinking. Their goals are to subjugate the rest of the world and herald in the coming of the 12th Imam, aka, the Mahdi. There is no compromise, no reasoning, no coming to an understanding here.

Some of us wonder, why water boarding so many times? If water boarding, sometimes described as torture, did not work the first time why do we believe that it will work the tenth, hundredth or thousandth time? How do we ever know if we got the truth or just a made-up story, through water boarding whether you believe it to be torture or not?

The answer is very straightforward – the CIA interrogators know their profession – they use whatever techniques or combination thereof and outside checking of facts to know when they were true and when they were not. As to the number of times it took that too is understandable when once again we look at KSM as a man. He is an unwavering Muslim who believes without reservation that what he has done is right and Allah blesses what he has planned to do. On top of all that, he is a very intelligent and incredibly brave man; as well as being extremely competent as what he does. I believe that one of the great mistakes we have made is to underestimate our enemy. They are strong, intelligent and resourceful.

I have gone on far too long, but do want to say in closing that I am deeply concerned that the nation I love is becoming too much in love with political correctness and seeking approval of other nations, rather than working for our survival and the extension of liberty to other nations.