On the torture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, from an interview with Ron Suskind (see Spiegel Online in “The President Knows more than He Lets on”)

SPIEGEL ONLINE: With waterboarding, the prisoner is made to feel as though he is drowing, even if he isn’t really at risk of dying. There are reports that Mohammed was a kind of unoffical record-holder when it came to waterboarding.

Suskind: With extraordinary minutes passing he earned a sort of grudging respect from interrogators. The thing they did with Mohammed is that we had captured his children, a boy and a girl, age 7 and 9. And at the darkest moment we threatened grievous injury to his children if he did not cooperate. His response was quite clear: “That’s fine. You can do what you want to my children, and they will find a better place with Allah.”

A dark omen indeed and people say faith doesn’t matter.

As in the case of the Fox News correspondents captured by Palestinian terrorists —“ sure we’ll convert to Islam, who cares. I don’t think Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would say anything similar. I can’t say I’m so courageous, but God, please grant me the grace of final perseverance.

What I found interesting in the interview is that the torturers actually became like the tortured. They came within inches of adopting the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s methods. Talk about a screwed up psyche after this experience (see the Milgram experiment) —“ all brought to you by the Bush administration.