ABC News has a bit of a bombshell interview with an ex-CIA agent who participated in the waterboarding of one of our captured terrorists, Abu Zubaydah. The discussion is frank and doesn’t insult the intelligence with simple platitudes and 1950’s morality. It covers the tough trades we have had to make when faced with possible attacks that could kill hundreds or thousands of innocent people:

Kiriakou said the feeling in the months after the 9/11 attacks was that interrogators did not have the time to delve into the agency’s bag of other interrogation tricks.

“Those tricks of the trade require a great deal of time — much of the time — and we didn’t have that luxury. We were afraid that there was another major attack coming,” he said.

…

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

…

“Like a lot of Americans, I’m involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique,” Kiriakou told ABC News. “And I struggle with it.”

Read the whole article, it’s pretty good. And it is honest. There were times, and will be times, when lives hang in the balance. The article goes on to note Zubaydah said if he was let free he would kill as many jews and westerners as he could. And that is the difference between bloody barbarians and civilized people faced with tough choices. They maim and kill thousands of people, Muslims included, and we pretend to drown them. In the end, our actions only cause brief discomfort, while theirs leave people dead.

It is not pleasant world out there due to some who foster an evil disregard for humanity and an obsession for power over others. Those who stand up to this evil do what they must, only because they must, only because the evil ones force us to do so to save lives. It is not the act, it is the intentions behind the act the determine whether it is morally valid. For example, it is what separates a surgeon from Jack The Ripper. I think what we, America, have done since 9-11 has been morally correct in all cases (individuals running Amok is not national policy or directions) and those who carried out the war on terror deserve to be saluted instead of used as political pawns.