(1) waterboarding is sometimes justified
(2) waterboarding is torture
(3) torture is sometimes justified

People have several different combinations of opinions on these three assertions. I suggest that due to the conflations of these three arguments, you mistakenly thought that the references to KSM were about 2 when they were actually about 1.

Personally, I agree with all three but consider torture a much higher level of violence than mere harsh interrogation such as waterboarding and therefore much more difficult to justify. I would happily subject every single illegal combatant to waterboarding just in case they know something useful. I just don’t think that causing brief pain and terror is that big a deal once you have already deprived a person of their liberty and privacy. Frankly, I think I would rather be waterboarded for a couple of minutes than to spend a month in a high-security prison.

Torture I would reserve for cases where I had a very high level of evidence both that the prisoner was an especially evil bastard and that he knew something that could save lives. And even then, only if hash interrogation failed to get the information needed to save those in danger.

As to waterboarding vs. physical maiming, I agree that the two are different but that doesn’t prove that waterboarding isn’t torture. At most, it proves that some forms of torture are more extreme than others. Arguably, it doesn’t even do that, as physical maiming is a separate category from torture altogether. Either can exist without the other.

Last and least, no, I didn’t delete anything. Both messages went to moderation. Future messages by you should go right through.

(did you delete my previous comment?)

I’ve argued that waterboarding is not torture because it isn’t comparable to the actions that we normally associate with torture. There is no maiming or even severe pain (lots of terror but minor pain). This just doesn’t compare to what we think of as real torture, things such as severe beatings, gouging out eyes, cutting off body parts, electrocution, etc. Given a choice between any of those things or waterboarding, which would you chose?

The same goes for the other two people who were waterboarded. If it was being done on spec, it would surely have been done to a whole lot more than three people.

Yes, the argument is circular, but that makes it no less valid.

I put it in even simpler terms: waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was obviously the right thing to do. Any set of principles that comes to a different conclusion is obviously flawed, and needs to be rethought.

Ditto for the USA entering WW2. Instead of arguing from first principles whether it was or wasn’t the right thing to do, the correct way to go about it is to accept that it clearly was right, and any set of principles that doesn’t reach that conclusion is therefore wrong.