i appreciate the books you put out by the way. going through this i remember learning i would say 50% of this stuff in my history book they don t teach in school anymore of course. they don t want to teach kids history how our country became the greatest country it became on the face of the earth. they are going to find out something amazing. we even won that war. we are going up against the greatest, most powerful army in the world at that time the british forces. these were farmers, these were teachers, the guys it hide behind rocks and trees and throw rocks. throw whatever they could possibly as a weapon against these guys. in that winter, it was so brutal on these guys, it was so cold. they had to build these huts as quickly as they could. they had totally fortified themselves down. trying to get any kind of rest and build some sort of strengthening. and while the british army was in philadelphia, getting warm beds, going out to bars and restaurants. getting their strength back, ev
and nail people to trees and crucify children and bury people up to their necks and throw rocks at them and that sort of stuff. i think it is tough to come back from that. i think it is difficult. has it been tough for you? no, and here s the reason. i was convinced because i ve relied on the department ofjustice that they were legal, and i m convinced because of the way that we did them, we did them in a way that wouldn t produce permanent harm, mental or physical harm. that was my obligation when i did it. i don t have any control over how someone else did it. do you have any regrets, though? because you said that when you thought about whether you should actually carry out the interrogations, and carry out waterboarding, that it would change your life as you knew it. do you regret that you went down that path? well, the only thing that i actually regret is that, in doing that, i m not likely to be a college professor.
i think it makes you more empathetic to what people are experiencing. remember that the reason that waterboarding wasn t done more than it was was because the interrogators didn t want to do it. we had agreed to waterboard those people to stop these catastrophic attacks, and once it seemed like we d got enough information to be able to do that, we weren t interested in doing that again. waterboarding was never the first or best choice for any of these people, and we went out of our way to try to avoid doing that. and so i think it s one thing to burn people in cages and nail people to trees and crucify children and bury people up to their necks and throw rocks at them and that sort of stuff. i think it is tough to come back from that. i think it is difficult. has it been tough for you? no, and here s the reason. i was convinced because i ve relied on the department of justice that they were legal, and i m convinced because of the way that we did them, we did them in a way that
demonizing americans have a responsibility to do something about israel, the thing that they will do is beat up american jews, throw rocks through the windows of american synagogues and harass jews who tries to speak up on social media. i wonder what you make of that criticism. i was one. progressive american jews who did speak out and have for many mears the. the problem is that the israeli jews have to nicks this and had a. there are. progressive jews in the u.s. don t like this. i feel like this is being used against us. against progressive jews.