CIA admits to waterboarding

So there it finally is, the director of CIA finally admitted to what the rest of the world has expect for some time now. That the USA has been subjecting their prisoners to enhanced interrogation methods, to use the words of director Michael Hayden himself.

My gut feeling is that using, what I would call, torture techniques to get information from your prisoners is to sink to the same level as your enemies. So to continue to fight the "good" fight is now impossible for USA and it's allies until they stop using their enhanced interrogation methods. On the other hand I also realize that in times when time is of the essence torture might be the only way to gather the intelligence needed to prevent an attack that could kill hundreds or even thousands of people. So what to do?

It would be rash of me to proclaim that I know anything about the way intelligence work works and so I'll not claim that torture is not a valid way to gather intelligence but disregarding the fact that I do not know anything about that I strongly believe that it is wrong to gather intelligence in a way that could be called torture. And to subject somebody to the feeling of drowning (which waterboarding is) is torture in my book. That does not mean that I don't think that USA should do what ever it takes to protect them self from attacks, it does however mean that I don't think they should use torture.

The question still remains though, what to do? Well the only answer I can really give to that is that they spend more money on intelligence work so they can discover threats earlier or in other ways. I'm sure a lot of money could be taken from the actual war effort if better intelligence would be gathered due to more money spent on it. That way nobody would have to be tortured and a lot of lives could be spared on all sides.

But what do I know. I am glad to see that the CIA finally owns up to what they have been accused of doing for a long time though.