Waterboarding is vital to our security needs.

So it seems as though we’re back on the whole waterboarding issue once again.

After President Obama released some top-secret Bush-era memos (memos that gave the government's first full account of the CIA's use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods) he has now left the door open to prosecuting the people that devised the legal justifications for allowing such activities to take place. These people would most likely be Justice Department officials, not CIA personnel.

My question is, “Why”?

Why is the President of the United States open to prosecuting people that have succeeded in keeping this country safe from another terrorist attack(s)?

Isn’t he interested in preventing attacks that could kill untold numbers of Americans?

I would imagine that he is, so why would he make it more difficult for our intelligence community to stop such events?

Oh… some of you still do not believe that waterboarding and other “harsh” methods of interrogation work?

Well you would be sadly mistaken, as you have to look no further than the CIA’s comments to CBS News regarding waterboarding for proof of its effectiveness.

According to those comments, waterboarding, in particular, helped stop a 9/11-style attack that was planned for Los Angeles. CIA officials went on to say that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, planned to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into a building in Los Angeles in 2005.

He only gave up this information after he was waterboarded.

Additionally, President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair stated, “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country”.

But now you have many, including President Obama, claiming that we “lost our moral bearings” in these interrogations, rather than applauding our intelligence community for a job well done.

These people seem to think that our “harsh” interrogation methods that have been used (used in retaliation to a war declared on us, mind you) are somehow the moral equivalent to the deeds of the terrorists themselves.

I am sorry, but they are not and we are not sinking to the level of the terrorists by practicing such methods.

As military historian Victor Davis Hanson has said, when a country is at war (which we currently are) there is a level of barbarity that it needs to descend into in order to succeed. Our dissention into barbarity is marked by actions that can kill high numbers of people, treat prisoners cruelly and marginalize the rights of enemies. Those actions, when used to stop a greater amount of death and destruction, however, do not put us on the same moral plane as Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad or The Taliban as they would do far worse if they possessed the resources and opportunities to do so.

Take the example given above.

Is waterboarding harsh? Unquestionably.

Is it cruel? Most definitely.

Is it torture? You could make a case for it, as Christopher Hitchens once did.

While waterboarding is all of those things… it was also very necessary in this situation, as it was responsible for saving an untold number of American lives.

The expectations and limitations that the Left wants to place on our intelligence community are completely unrealistic. They seem to have this ridiculous post-facto notion that if our intelligence officials aren’t perfect, then they’re not good. That is pretty shabby treatment for the people that keep us safe. It is also rather dangerous, as it places needless barriers in the way of these people gaining valuable information about our enemies and their intentions.

Listen, I wish we could gain information by merely sitting down and reasoning with these people, but that is impossible. These people, the terrorists we are currently at war with, are not a rational group of people, therefore, they do not respond to rational forms of interrogation. They are willing to die for a cause that has been started and led by a number of murderous madmen. What would lead anyone to believe that these terrorists would respond to standard interrogational techniques?

That leads me to another question, what is going to happen when we do have a prisoner that has vital information and simply won’t talk?

That’s a question that President Obama needs to figure out as, literally, thousands of American lives could be riding on his answer.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John