Waterboarding wet dreams crushed

Every protest event against the war on terror that I’ve attended, the big applause-getter has always been the speaker who can first condemn waterboarding. Countless Leftist discussion boards have had endless debates about whether waterboarding is torture and how the US routinely uses this technique. It’s almost accepted fact that every Muslim the US talks to gets waterboarded a few times.

Well, it turns out it’s not true. CIA chief Michael Hayden testified to Congress yesterday that’s only happened to three terrorists – three proven and admitted terrorists, who had time-sensitive information. (LA Times link);

He also testified that only three detainees were ever subjected to the method: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks; Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda operative tied to the Sept. 11 plot; and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, a Saudi suspected of playing a key role in the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Three people – not thousands, or hundeds or even tens – three. And it hasn’t been used on anyone in the last five years. The Wall Street Journal’s Review and Outlook column “Tall Torture Tales” today goes a bit further;

The waterboarding was conducted by intelligence professionals who understood they were operating not only with the approval of the Justice Department but also the informed consent of key Congressional leaders, including Democrat Jay Rockefeller, then the ranking minority Member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

So that’s the extent of the whole thing. If waterboarding can be considered torture (which I don’t believe), out of the thousands of terrorists we’ve captured, only three – all admitted murderers and thugs – have had the distinct honor of being waterboarded – and Hayden banned the use of it in 2006.

It must suck to be on the Left, today. Whatever are they going to do with all of those signs and displays they drag around with them? A recycling nightmare. It maybe true that more people in the US have been voluntarily waterboarded than have been actually tortured by our government extracting information.

Of course, this news will get buried under the cacophony of the worthless Super-Tuesday news. Nonetheless, it’s here for all of Google Rangers to find.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Politics, Terror War