CIA story from ABC News

You have probably already heard about this story from ABC News. According to the report, John Kiriakou, the CIA officer whose team captured Al Qaeda Chief Abu Zubaydah, said his team subjected Zubaydah to waterboarding, and that the technique "broke" the terror leader in "less than 35 seconds." He said said he believes waterboarding is torture, but said the need for intelligence that would help prevent future attacks justified the technique.

"The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks," Kiriakou said of the information Zubaydah provided.

"What happens if we don't waterboard a person, and we don't get that nugget of information, and there's an attack," Kiriakou said. "I would have trouble forgiving myself."

The CIA secretly recorded the interrogation of Zubaydah, then destroyed the tapes. Kiriakou told ABC he had no idea that the CIA was taping the session, or that the tape had been destroyed."

I have no problem with members of the CIA subjecting terrorists to waterboarding in order to prevent the deaths of innocent people. But to me, the most disturbing portion of the story is the following: "In that context, at that time, Kiriakou says he felt waterboarding was something the United States needed to do.
"At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed, and as September 11th has, you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I've changed my mind," he told ABC News."

I knew we would get to a point after 9/11 in which we would fall back into the ways that we thought prior to the attacks. As time progresses, we change our minds until there is another attack. And then we start the process all over again when we ask ourselves why we didn't connect the dots...