Our friends over at Firedoglake have put out a short post on the waterboarding of Al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed  who was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003. I have always wanted to meet Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for I have a number of questions to ask him. You see, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed killed one of my closest friends, Daniel Pearl. I don't remember actually meeting Danny but we became close and fast friends in the Spring of our freshman year at Stanford. We would rush and pledge the same fraternity, share our love of folk music from the world over, muse what it was like to be American and not be American for he and I are sons of immigrants, and talk politics for hours on end. I last saw Danny five months before he was butchered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Those of us who knew Danny are very protective of Danny and his legacy because Danny Pearl was an exceptional human being. It is hard to talk about Danny and not wax eloquent. It is beyond belief to us that when Al Qaeda killed Danny they killed someone who actually was interested in having their grievances heard. Not that Danny or I sympathized with Islamic terrorism but  there are many who think it important to understand its causes so that we might be able to better mitigate its spread.

In thinking about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the fact that he was waterboarded 183 times in the month of March of 2003, I cannot but express how this denigrates everything that Danny stood for. In waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we have descended to the level of that butcher. We have proved that we are no better than them and I refuse to believe that. The West has a moral obligation to live up to the ideals that Danny Pearl embodied.

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