Ex-CIA Says Waterboarding Works, But Is Torture

Brian Ross conducts this amazing interview with John Kiriakou, an ex-CIA operative involved in the capture and handling of high level al Qaeda targets like Abu Zubaydah, and it's gripping. Kiriakou, who underwent waterboarding himself as part of his training, believes it broke Zubaydah, who according to Kiriakou subsequently provided intelligence crucial to halting many attacks. Yet Kiriakou tells Brian Ross he now believes that waterboarding is torture and should not be used. Later in the interview he appears more conflicted about it, saying that if he neglected to use it and a preventable attack then occurred he would have trouble forgiving himself.

I find myself thinking of Captain Sisko from "In the Pale Moonlight." If I were making that call, would I sacrifice my principles, and the self-respect that goes with them, if I thought it might stop an attack. I probably would. Sounds acceptable when you imagine foiling an atrocity, but what if you just end up torturing someone who doesn't know anything? Do you rationalize it by saying he was a bad guy anyway? If he was certainly a bad guy, a known quantity like Zubaydah, I, like Sisko, could live with that. I say this believing that torture should, by the standards of any civilized nation, be illegal, and for a nation that claims the mantle of human rights must be illegal. War forces good people to cross the line, to commit crimes. If Sisko had been arrested, I think he would have believed he deserved it.