I have read here and hard on TV that only 3 terrorists were waterboarded: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Rahim Al-Nashiri. Does that sound accurate? I had been under the impression that the our government had waterboarded hundreds of terrorists and even some suspected, non-confirmed terrorists. I'm not sure of the significance of the second two, but am aware of KSM. I would say waterboard him and bin Laden (assuming we capture him alive) to get whatever information we can from al quaeda's leadership. It's torture, but this is the guy that is responsible for September 11 and the guy who slit Daniel Pearl's throat. I have no sympathy for this guy. No one on this forum would make it close to 14 seconds, probably not even 4 seconds. But no one on this forum has done anything like KSM did. Some might disagree when I say we should reserve this for only the very upper leadership. Others might disagree that I saw we should use this at all.
Nice try, but they weren't tortured not in order to give information about the Al Qaeda leadership. They had already given that information by traditional interrogation techniques.
They were tortured to give information about the alleged link between Al Qaeda and Saddam, so that Cheney and his Neocon pals could sell the Iraq War.
Read Ali Soufan's article at Washington Post or his testimony at the Senate.
And it wasn't only terrorists that got that treatment. An Iraqi prisoner of war was waterboarded after direct orders from Cheney for the same reasons.
