Murdock: Americans should be proud of waterboarding
Library Tower looms 73 stories above Los Angeles. But the Pacific Coast’s highest skyscraper could have become a smoldering pile of steel beams had CIA interrogators not waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March 2003, as declassified memoranda reveal. Americans should be proud that our public servants had the patience and persistence to pressure al-Qaida’s self-described military chief until he cracked.
The hard-core hand-wringing among soft-headed liberals over these so-called “torture memos” ignores the fact that these tactics squeezed priceless intelligence from KSM and al-Qaida’s Abu Zubaydah (waterboarded 83 times in August 2002).
As former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen explained in the Washington Post, a May 2005 Justice Department memo states: “Before the CIA used enhanced (interrogation) techniques … KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks." Waterboarding finally loosened KSM’s lips.
This uncovered “a KSM plot, the Second Wave, ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.” KSM later told Guantanamo authorities that al-Qaida targeted the 1,018-foot-tall Library Tower. KSM’s confessions, the memo says, prompted “the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the ‘Second Wave.’”
“(I)nformation obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali,” the memo continues. Hambali supervised October 2002’s Bali nightclub bombings that shredded 202 vacationers and wounded 209 others.
Rough questioning inspired KSM to identify Iyman Faris. He was convicted of plotting to sever the Brooklyn Bridge’s cables with torches. KSM also fingered Sept. 11 collaborator Yazid Sufaat. The 9-11 Commission Report states that Sufaat “cultivate(d) anthrax for al-Qaida in a laboratory he helped set up near the Kandahar airport.”
Zubaydah initially clammed up, but waterboarding made him sing. He squealed on USS Cole bomber Rahim al-Nashiri, (17 Americans dead; 40 wounded), Sept. 11 conspirator Ramzi bin al-Shibh and KSM.
Justice’s memo concludes, “The CIA believes ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al-Qaida has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since Sept. 11, 2001.’¦” Zubaydah explains why enhanced interrogation works: “Brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship.”
Meanwhile, the ceaseless whimpering over KSM’s waterboarding almost universally neglects his victims’ agony. KSM masterminded the 9/11 massacre (2,976 dead, 7,356 wounded). He also said: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl.” KSM financed February 1993’s Twin Towers explosion (six dead; 1,040 injured).
Thus, my eyes stayed dry upon learning that American counterterrorists dampened KSM’s nostrils 183 times. I cry for the 2,976 individuals who KSM, Zubaydah, and their colleagues slaughtered on 9/11. Of the 2,752 they butchered at the World Trade Center, 1,125 were literally vaporized.
Their loved ones still do not have so much as bone fragments to bury, nor place flowers upon, nor shed tears.
Now that is torture.
Excellent