Waterboarding -- its justification

A good hard-hitting article about the use of waterboarding and what it bought us. From the National Review:

The Post and Abu Zubaydah
The Left�s assault on the CIA program continues with today�s front-page story about the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah: �Detainees Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots.� The story, like so many on this program, is rife with errors and misinformation.

For example, the Post states:

�Abu Zubaida quickly told U.S. interrogators of [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed and of others he knew to be in al-Qaeda, and he revealed the plans of the low-level operatives who fled Afghanistan with him. Some were intent on returning to target American forces with bombs; others wanted to strike on American soil again, according to military documents and law enforcement sources. Such intelligence was significant but not blockbuster material. Frustrated, the Bush administration ratcheted up the pressure � for the first time approving the use of increasingly harsh interrogations, including waterboarding.�

This is either uninformed or intentionally misleading.

In fact, what Abu Zubaydah disclosed to the CIA during this period was that the fact that KSM was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and that his code name was �Muktar� � something Zubaydah thought we already knew, but in fact we did not. Intelligence officials had been trying for months to figure out who �Muktar� was. This information provided by Zubaydah was a critical piece of the puzzle that allowed them to pursue and eventually capture KSM. This fact, in and of itself, discredits the premise of the Post story � to suggest that the capture of KSM was not information that �foiled plots� to attack America is absurd on the face of it.

The Post also acknowledges that Zubaydah�s �interrogations led directly to the arrest of Jose Padilla� but dismisses Padilla as the man behind a fanciful �dirty bomb� plot and notes that Padilla was never charged in any such plot. In fact, Padilla was a hardened terrorist who had trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and was a prot�g� of al Qaeda�s third in command, Mohammed Atef. And when he was captured, Padilla was being prepared for a much more sinister and realistic attack on America.

What follows is an in depth analysis of what Padilla was actually planning to do, his rank in the organization (hint: very high) and how this information has helped to take several other key operatives out of circulation.