more on the moral divide

9/11 was one attack against the United States but it woke the intelligence community up to the fact that there was a new war to be fought. The enemy in this way fights to total loss in the way that it kills prisoners and the fact that it sees all U.S. citizens as targets. Also this new enemy much like the Japanese has no regard for life their own or anyone else's. This is the reason for harsh interrogations as has just been released under a storm of criticism about the U.S. committing torture. The water boarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed led to the foiling of an attack out of Los Angeles area airports similar to the 9/11 attacks. The risks were still very high at the time of Khalid's capture and since there was no other way of getting information out of him the decision was to override the constraints on the interrogators. If water boarding one man can save the lives of potentially thousands I would see this as a justified crossing of the moral divide.