Quotes from Malcolm Nance

In the media, waterboarding is called 'simulated drowning,' but that's a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.

I've been involved in air strikes against Syria and operations against Syria numerous times in my career.

One of the most missed components of the entire insurgency in Iraq was that Syria and Bashar al-Assad facilitated Al Qaeda's operations in Iraq. They actually headquartered the Iraq Ba'ath Party and all of their escaped generals in Damascus.

I was a part of the planning and attack package intelligence team for the strike against Syria in 1983 - in which we lost a pilot and had another one captured until Jesse Jackson got him out - and numerous other operations against Syria both before the Iraq war and during the insurgency.

Russia's a small country. It's really poor. It has nothing other than oil and weapons sales.

The goals of Russia since 1917 have been to destroy capitalism, discredit democracy, and show that Communist collectivism was the greatest social and political system in the world.

Al Qaeda is a racially diverse organization that is well aware of its dependence on a labor pool dominated by Arab Muslim men. It also has an adaptable and fluid counterintelligence mind-set.

Vladimir Putin understood, from the Communist era when he was a KGB officer, that the Russian propaganda system of targeting Western media - that in the digital world, you could easily pull the Western media around by a nose ring.

I come from an African-American family that is predominantly Muslim. I have had to covertly operate in parts of the Middle East and Africa. I've lived a Muslim life and prayed in Mosques, Husseiniyahs, and shrines where needed. One must respect Islam to understand Islam. I've read the Quran through and through a half dozen times.

Al Qaeda has dominated the battlefield of the soul among the disaffected, disenfranchised, and dissatisfied. It promises action instead of discussion.

Al Qaeda's leaders seek to reverse what they claim are corrupt Islamic practices bookended by the Mongol invasions in 1256 and Ataturk's ending the caliphate in 1924. Theirs is a fight to turn Islam's clock back to the time of Prophet Muhammad's original followers.

Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually, the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia - meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.

Whenever counterterrorism professionals see punditry and media make grand pronunciations on terrorism that defy all demonstrable evidence, an unrepeatable oath is usually muttered.

ISIL is not 'radical Islam.' Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, the Muslim Brotherhood - these are radical Islamic groups. They resort to armed struggle and terrorism to move toward their goals. But they are also deeply political organizations that have internal rules, standards, and codes of conduct.

Identifying terrorists on the battlefield is relatively simple.

A militant's profile lies not in his age, race, culture, or education; anyone can join or be adopted by the al Qaeda network, the only prerequisite being a willingness to accept the group's radical, cultlike ideology.

There are no military options for Iran. Attack them, and they will destroy the Gulf States oil industries, rain hundreds of missiles onto Israel, close the Arabian Gulf, and shoot oil prices to $300 per barrel, which could cause our own economic downfall.

Intelligence officers are a peculiar lot. Whether they are active or retired, their brains are wired for a completely different way of seeing the world around them.

I have personally led, witnessed, and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.

Referring to ISIL as a destructive religious cult rather than a legitimate theo-political 'radical Islamic' group is not just more accurate, it also exposes ISIL's corrupt religious narrative.

Vladimir Putin is creating an axis of authoritarian regimes that he will lead.

Waterboarding should never be used as an interrogation tool. It is beneath our values.

I know waterboarding is torture because I have been on the giving and receiving end of the practice.

Osama bin Laden has managed to replace fear of God and adherence to the Quran with his philosophy of jihad above all else. What's behind that facade is the true philosophical intentions of al Qaeda: the establishment of a new Islamic caliphate that will defeat democracy as the greater of the two political orders.