"Useless" is a bad term and I do not recall using if I had. Ineffective is what torture is.
And yet the independent panel that investigated that torture AND the result of it found that it was not effective. And I have already provided that brief - the one that you apparently have ignored.
Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
Who cares how they feel? They're bloodthirsty savages. They're feelings aren't important. Doing whatever it takes to defang them is the only thing that matters.Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
You understand that they feel the same way.
Payback is a bitch.
It would be a lot easier to force the bureaucrats to comply with the Constitution by ceasing and desisting from intervening in the internal affairs of other nations.
.
Who cares how they feel? They're bloodthirsty savages. They're feelings aren't important. Doing whatever it takes to defang them is the only thing that matters.Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
You understand that they feel the same way.
Payback is a bitch.
It would be a lot easier to force the bureaucrats to comply with the Constitution by ceasing and desisting from intervening in the internal affairs of other nations.
.
Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
Who cares how they feel? They're bloodthirsty savages. They're feelings aren't important. Doing whatever it takes to defang them is the only thing that matters.Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
You understand that they feel the same way.
Payback is a bitch.
It would be a lot easier to force the bureaucrats to comply with the Constitution by ceasing and desisting from intervening in the internal affairs of other nations.
.
Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
Who cares how they feel? They're bloodthirsty savages. They're feelings aren't important. Doing whatever it takes to defang them is the only thing that matters.Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
You understand that they feel the same way.
Payback is a bitch.
It would be a lot easier to force the bureaucrats to comply with the Constitution by ceasing and desisting from intervening in the internal affairs of other nations.
.
My concepts of "morality" were heavily influenced by the "brainwashing" of American cultural input while "growing up". I wonder what yours are the result of.
Waterboarding worked so well and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's story was so fascinating they wanted to hear it 183 times. Can't of any other reason they waterboarded him 183 times, can you?
I'm leaning towards a moral judgement that the so-called "civilized" westerners who participated in any torture sessions of anybody are morally more culpable than any of their victims, especially the medical personnel, whatever the uncharged, unconvicted victims were accused of.
- The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
- Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.”
- .....so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,”... One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the (medical) officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
- The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
- “Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote....Duh....after 183 attempts they finally figured that out....
- “Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
- “We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
- An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”)
NEWS DESK
DECEMBER 31, 2014
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the C.I.A.
BY DEXTER FILKINS
Undated photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: AP
“I M W KSM.”
So went the electrifying text message received by a C.I.A. operative in Islamabad, Pakistan, in February of 2003, sent by a mysterious man known as Asset X. The note confirmed what Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior Al Qaeda leader and the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. K.S.M., as he later came to be known in the West, was still at large, and the C.I.A. wanted him almost as badly as they wanted Osama bin Laden.
Within hours of the operative receiving the text message, C.I.A. and Pakistani intelligence officers followed Asset X’s lead, swooped into the compound where Mohammed was living, and captured him. The takedown of Mohammed had almost fallen apart several times, thanks to C.I.A. mismanagement of Asset X. Just as remarkable is how his capture was later used to justify the most brutal aspects of the C.I.A.’s special interrogation program that was put in place after the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after his capture in Rawalpindi, on March 1, 2003, Mohammed was spirited to secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Poland, where his interrogators went straight to brutality: slamming him against a wall (a practice known as “walling”), depriving him of sleep (at one point for more than a week), forcing him to stand or crouch in painful positions, stripping him during questioning, and engaging in a bizarre practice called “rectal rehydration.” (According to a C.I.A. document, it was supposed to help “clear a person’s head.”) In Poland, the interrogators subjected Mohammed to waterboarding, a form of torture that makes a person believe he is drowning, at least a hundred and eighty-three times.
- The details of Mohammed’s interrogation, described in the report issued earlier this month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, make for grim, even sickening reading. During Mohammed’s waterboarding sessions, C.I.A. officers reported that he “yelled and twisted,” “seemed to lose control,” and became “somewhat frantic.” The purpose of the waterboarding appears to have been to bring Mohammed as close as possible to death without actually killing him. As one C.I.A. medical officer who presided over the torture wrote, “In the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
On March 12, 2003, during a waterboarding session, so much water was forced into Mohammed that his “abdomen was somewhat distended and he expressed water when the abdomen was pressed,” the Senate report says, quoting from a C.I.A. cable. One of the medical officers present said that, even though Mohammed was vomiting during the sessions, his “gastric contents” had become so diluted that he was “not concerned about regurgitated gastric acid damaging KSM’s esophagus.” Instead, the medical officer said, he was worried that Mohammed had been filled with so much water that there was a danger that the electrolytes in his blood had become dangerously diluted; the officer requested that C.I.A. interrogators use salted water during the waterboarding sessions.
The Senate report, which drew almost entirely on the C.I.A.’s internal communications, makes a convincing case that while the interrogation of Mohammed produced some valuable information, the interrogators never got what they wanted. No information provided by Mohammed led directly to the capture of a terrorist or the disruption of a terrorist plot.
Here are some quotations from C.I.A. records filed during Mohammed’s interrogation:
“Overall view seems to be” that waterboarding “is not working in gaining KSM[’s] compliance,” one officer wrote.
“Against KSM it has proven ineffective,” the deputy chief of the C.I.A. interrogation program wrote. “The potential for physical harm is far greater with the waterboard than with the other techniques, bringing into question the issue of risk vs. gain.”
“We seem to have lost ground,” the deputy chief continued, writing that the practice “may poison the well.”
An official C.I.A. assessment of the interrogations concluded that Mohammed managed to conceal his most valuable information, despite being tortured. (The report was titled “Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.”) Another report, written after the waterboarding sessions had ended, said that interrogators “remain[ed] highly suspicious that KSM is withholding, exaggerating, misdirecting, or outright fabricating information” on weapons of mass destruction. “Pretend cooperation,’’ another report said. “May never be forthcoming or honest,” said another.
Maybe they water boarded him all those times because he was a murdering psychopath. I think that water boarding probably should not be used except in very extreme cases however . When interrogation fails and you have a person Like KSM, not just your average burglary suspect, but someone who held the keys potentially to an entire terrorist organization.
All terrorists with blood on their hands deserve to be tortured. I see no reason to spare them. If it saves just one life it's justified.
My concepts of "morality" were heavily influenced by the "brainwashing" of American cultural input while "growing up". I wonder what yours are the result of.
My conception of morality is based on simple logic. You don't owe anything to people who are trying to kill you, people who would cut off your head or cook you in an iron cage if given the chance. They aren't entitled to decent treatment.
