To: Brumar89 who wrote (475204 ) 4/26/2009 11:01:18 PM From: Wharf Rat 2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1574261 "could have become a smoldering pile of steel beams had CIA interrogators not waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) 183 times in March 2003" Bullshit. Media cite DOJ memo to claim link -- refuted by Bush timeline -- between KSM waterboarding, thwarted L.A. plot Summary: Media figures have pointed to a 2005 Justice Department memo to claim that the use of waterboarding on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed caused him to reveal information intelligence officials used to foil a plot to attack the Library Tower in Los Angeles. But according to the Bush administration, the plot was broken up more than a year before Mohammed's capture.... Slate.com's Timothy Noah noted on April 21, that claim conflicts with the "chronology" of events put forth on multiple occasions by the Bush administration. For instance, in a February 9, 2006, White House press briefing that Noah cited, Bush homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend noted that Mohammed was not captured until more than a year after the individuals planning the Library Tower attacks had concluded that the plot had been "canceled." Noah also noted that a May 23, 2007, Bush administration fact sheet stated that the administration "broke up" the Library Tower plot "in 2002" -- before Mohammed was captured. Noah concluded: Conceivably the Bush administration, or at least parts of the Bush administration, didn't realize until Sheikh Mohammed confessed under torture that it had already broken up a plot to blow up the Library Tower about which it knew nothing. Stranger things have happened. But the plot was already a dead letter. If foiling the Library Tower plot was the reason to water-board Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, then that water-boarding was more than cruel and unjust. It was a waste of water.mediamatters.org