Enhanced Interrogations Worked

Los Angles should be on their knees thanking God that George W. Bush was in office in 2003 and not Obama. The Washington Post has released a story saying that after waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they received information that allowed them to break up another attack. I’ll just post a few quotes from the article. It is quite good.

“Soon, you will know.” That is the ominous statement an uncooperative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, told his CIA interrogators when they initially asked him – after he had been captured – about additional planned al Qaeda attacks on the United States

…

As CIA Acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo explained in a 2004 letter to then-Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the CIA would only resort to waterboarding a top al Qaeda leader when the agency had “credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent,”

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“Both KSM and Zubaydah had ‘expressed their belief that the general U.S. population was “weak,” lacked resilience and would be unable to “do what was necessary” to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals,’ ” the memo says. “Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogation of KSM, he resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, ‘Soon, you will know.’ ”

After he was waterboarded, KSM provided the CIA with information that enabled the U.S. government to close down a terror cell already “tasked” with flying a jet into a building in Los Angeles

There are times I wish I had a magic crystal ball that could tell me an alternative reality based on the simplest change in decision making. Today, nearly every liberal in L.A. is apoplectic over the idea that Bush’s CIA used waterboarding on anyone. These high and mighty examples of God’s finest gifts to humanity would never change their minds on waterboarding based on something as insignificant as their own lives. They would say (in their classic fashion of regurgitating talking points instead of actual thoughts), “If I had to die to save America’s morality, I would.” After I finished vomiting, I would pull out my crystal ball.

The fact is, Bush can’t win here. If he hadn’t waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and fouled the plot, the liberals would have cried that Bush was incompetent and couldn’t do the most basic job of keeping Americans safe. The fact is, the left can not be pleased when a Republican is in the White House. Even when that Republican is more liberal than conservative. I gave credit to Obama for saving Captain Phillips from the pirates. Why can’t the left give credit to Bush for saving multiple American lives?

Lastly, I am sick of liberals getting to set the premise of any political debate. But, I guess I must except it. So, let’s apply their premise and logic to what we have learned with this story:

1) Torture never yields any reliable intelligence.

2) Waterboarding gave us reliable intelligence, therefore

3) Waterboarding is not torture.

Did I get that one right?