Practice Makes Perfect: Two AQ Honchos Waterboarded 266 Times

You know what really upsets me the most about this report? I had 270 in the office waterboarding pool. Damn, just missed hitting it on the nose.

C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The New York Times reported in 2007 that Mr. Mohammed had been barraged more than 100 times with harsh interrogation methods, causing C.I.A. officers to worry that they might have crossed legal limits and to halt his questioning. But the precise number and the exact nature of the interrogation method was not previously known.

The release of the numbers is likely to become part of the debate about the morality and efficacy of interrogation methods that the Justice Department under the Bush administration declared legal even though the United States had historically treated them as torture.

Since some are apparently upset waterboarding may not be all that effective, new methods of torture now include reading aloud NY Times fashion stories on Michele Obama, Twitter updates from Meghan McCain, and feigned outrage from RawMuscleGlutes.

Memo to Democrats: Waterboarding Works

For all those on the left--and some on the right--who get all squishy over the concept of waterboarding terrorists, here's all you need to know about how effective the method is.

Thirty-five seconds of waterboarding was all it took to get a top al Qaeda terrorist to break, his CIA interrogator revealed yesterday.

Abu Zubaydah, a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden captured in March 2002, gave up his conspirators after a half-minute of the technique, according to now retired CIA officer John Kiriakou.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," Kiriakou told ABC News.

"From that day on, he answered every question."

He added, "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

Zubaydah was reportedly the first insider to finger Khalid Sheik Mohammed as the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, as well as Jose Padilla's alleged dirty bomb plot.

So for all the caterwauling and handwringing about our image around the world, for all the incessant whining, I have a simple question: Would you have preferred those possible dozens of attacks to have occurred or would it have been better to stop them?

More reaction here.