In the estimation of your humble author, anyone shedding tears because we waterboarded KSM loses much of my respect. First, there is still a debate as to whether waterboarding and other more aggressive interrogation techniques are torture at all. It is important that those of us who do not think they are do not concede the point. Yet that is exactly what is happening. If anti-war nitwits can waterboard each other at a protest with no ill effects, it is not torture!
Second, when KSM hints darkly that something is on the horizon, our government has a duty to find out what is being planned. Anyone who thinks that the Obama administration would not do the same is a fool. President Obama is only able to release documents and explore prosecutions related to interrogations because the Bush administration did the dirty and hard work of combatting Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism.
It is only under pressure from former VP Cheney that the administration and their media accomplices have had to acknowledge that the techniques resulted in actionable intel and resulted in preventing an attack on Los Angeles among others. Cheney is correct, if you are going to release the details of our efforts without the results you lose the context to determine their effectiveness and whether we should have used them. So release the results. I am confident that even many Obama voters will agree that we did the right thing. Those that still cry over the waterboarding of KSM and company are crying the tears of a clown.
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