Unfortunately, we are not dealing with mere criminals. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad didn't just steal your neighbour's car in Los Angeles. He masterminded a terrorist plot --- that is why he was detained and waterboarded.

Without waterboarding, you could have lost some friends in a terrorist attack on Los Angeles' Library Tower or even one on the Sears Tower in Chicago --- both of which were revealed in CIA and DHS and FBI probes as a result. And let us not forget that there are other targets that could have sustained the same sort of plot --- the Space Needle in Seattle, the Peachtree Towers in Atlanta, the Transamerica Building and Coit Tower in San Francisco, to speak nothing of race tracks and sport stadiums that could also have been targeted by the likes of AlQaeda and AbuSayyaf and Islamic Jihad and Jemaah Islamiyah.

In my opinion Mr Cheney is absolutely right to demand the release of ALL information --- and if it comes down to all parties needing to be investigated, it will positively put certain folks under the same microscope that Mr Bush's administration officials are now prospectively being targeted with not only in Spain by a known anti-Semite named Gonzalo Boye who has been implicated in a number of anti-Israeli efforts but also Baltasar Garzon who has been heavily involved with a Marxist labour party in that country, but now also potentially here in the United States thanks to the efforts of Mr Obama to defer to Mr Holder --- in a move that would be the equivalent of prosecuting General Dwight Eisenhower and General Douglas MacArthur simply because they did the job they were assigned to do per President Franklin Delano Roosevelt which was to shut down the Axis powers in World War II.

And one more point we need to understand is Democrat AND Republican Congressional representatives, INCLUDING the House Speaker, Ms Pelosi, ALSO approved the more aggressive techniques, INCLUDING waterboarding.

This is why we NEED to leave the Bush Administration officials alone: Their efforts, however controversial, helped save MILLIONS of lives and BILLIONS of dollars because we stopped further terrorist attacks on our soil in the wake of 11 September 2001.

Do I have a problem with torture? Hell yes. Is it always necessary? Of course not. But what would you do if you had HOURS to stop a dangerous terrorist attack upon transport facilities, like the Aumshinrikyo cultists' sarin gas attack on the Tokyo tube systems in 1995, when underground railway commuters were targeted and killed? Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Muhammad allowed us to get the information we needed to stop another 11 September attack from devastating Los Angeles.

And by the way how many of the enemy combatants picked up in the field were there actually sustaining waterboarding or other aggressive techniques of obtaining information, torturous or otherwise? Very few. More than likely they would be pampered at the Guantanamo Naval Air Station in Cuba with a culturally correct diet and painted arrows directing the way to Makka.

As torturous as waterboarding is, I am not so certain I will trust Mr Olbermann's word; I will more than likely find my own conclusion without his disinformation, and I may also find that waterboarding is torture. And do I think that Shepard Smith is entirely correct in his assessment, We do not torture, we are America? Of course not. Even he is fallible. However, he is not often fallible, but he may have been mistaken here.

As for the Black community, they are probably not too concerned with this story as they are like most other Americans more concerned about the growing preponderance of government spending on both sides of the Congressional aisle, angry about the earmarks...and they are also more concerned about making ends meet and keeping their jobs and holding on to the dreams they sought, even as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae take advantage of them.

There is no perfect way to prevent terrorist attacks, Jim --- but we could certainly have done a better job. That said, terrorists do not abide by the Geneva Convention or the Marquess of Queensbury rules. They showed us no mercy on 11 September, killing thousands of Americans, some of whom were Black --- and not many Americans would like to show terrorists any mercy either.