Featured Advertisers
Sun, Nov. 08  -   -  Mobile  -  RSS
  

Make a post about this story on FredTalk. Get a printer-friendly version of this page. E-mail this story to a friend.

Waterboarding: Less than five minutes, three awful men

A FEW MINUTES WELL SPENT By Jonah Goldberg

Date published: 3/9/2008

WASHINGTON--

Less than five minutes.

That's the total amount of time the United States has waterboarded terrorist detainees. How many detainees? Three.

One was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "the principle architect of the 9/11 attacks" according to the 9/11 Report, and the head of al-Qaida's "military committee." Linked to numerous terror plots, he is believed to have financed the first World Trade Center bombing, helped set up the courier system that resulted in the infamous Bali bombing, and cut off Danny Pearl's head.

A second was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the head of al-Qaida operations in the Persian Gulf. He allegedly played a role in the 2000 millennium terror plots and was the mastermind behind the USS Cole attack that killed 17 Americans.

The third was Abu Zubaydah, said to be Osama bin Laden's top man after Ayman al Zawahri. It is believed that Zubaydah essentially ran al-Qaida's terror camps and recruitment operations. He was waterboarded just six months after the 9/11 attacks and while the anthrax scare was still ongoing.

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who witnessed the interrogation, told ABC: "The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

He divulged, according to Kiriakou, "al-Qaida's leadership structure" and identified high-level terrorists the CIA didn't know much, if anything, about.

And that's it. Less than five minutes, three awful men, five years ago.

(We don't know how long, exactly, each was waterboarded, but reports suggest Zubaydah lasted between 30 and 35 seconds, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed lasted the longest--between 90 seconds and three minutes.)

The reason these facts are important is simple. Human rights groups, the media, and partisan opponents of the Bush administration and the war on terror have tried to portray the U.S. as a "torture state" that has completely abdicated its decency, its principles, and even its soul under a president who believes in an ominous-sounding "unitary executive" branch. We've gone down a "slippery slope," making America indistinguishable from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.


1  2  Next Page  


Follow us on
twitter
fredericksburg.com Facebook page


Date published: 3/9/2008


Most recent reader comments:

Viewing all 2 comments. (Sorted in reverse order, with most recent post at the top.)

Display comments on this page. | Sort:

PLEASE READ: These reader comments are not moderated. Each user is solely responsible for any message (s)he posts here. The Free Lance-Star does not endorse the views expressed within these comments. All users who post to this Web site must agree to the terms of the FredTalk User Agreement. We rely on our readers to police themselves, and report any content that violates our User Agreement. In accordance with our User Agreement, we reserve the right to remove any post at any time for any reason, and will restrict access of registered users who repeatedly violate our terms. Any reader can report inappropriate content by clicking the "Report this post to admins" link at the bottom of each comment. You need not be registered to report a post.

tpaine1801 nails it (posted by Biffer , Mar. 9, 2008 10:39 am)   
That is just right - the moral relativism of the right, now exposed. I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.... it smells like... victory.

Right Wing Moral Relativism (posted by tpaine1801 , Mar. 9, 2008 1:51 am)   
Excellent example of moral relativism on the far right--time, place, context determine moral meaning. Strange how an author of "Liberal Fascism" employs the Marxist dictum: The end justifies the means. Torture is not an American value or a Christian one. We sell our very soul as a nation to bend,twist, contort or justify it. How can a party that rabidly condemed Clinton's parsing of "What is...is" somehow find wiggle room for some of mankind's most depraved acts like greed, war and now torture?

What do you think?
Enter your FredTalk username and password to post a comment on this story. If you are registered on FredTalk or another part of this site, use that login here. Otherwise, you can just REGISTER here... .

Username: Password:

Post title:


Please keep it brief: (512-character limit)
Please make sure CAPS LOCK is off. Posts in ALL CAPS will be deleted.)


By checking this box, you agree to the terms of the FredTalk User agreement.