When I was asked to appear on the Daily Show, the news-with-views-and-edgy comedy TV program, I was reluctant. The issue: whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" used to pry information about terrorist plots from al-Qaeda leaders should be regarded as torture and those responsible prosecuted. How would Jon Stewart, the acerbic and unabashedly liberal host, make this issue funny? How would I make it serious?

In the end, I agreed. Why? Because millions of Americans don't read newspapers, web-zines and wonky blogs. If my mission is to tell the public what I believe to be the truth about life-and-death issues, I have to be willing to go where the public is.

As always on TV, I'd have to make my case in sound-bites - though in this instance, many would be swallowed by Jon's punch lines, and by the studio audience's laughter, cheers and hoots. I figured I'd better try to prepare myself by running an interview in my head. What follows is the interview I fantasized.

Jon: So, Cliff, let's get to the point: How can you support torture!?!?!

Cliff: Actually, Jon, I don't. But more important: The CIA officials who have performed harsh interrogations do not support torture. The lawyers who wrote the memos telling the CIA what was permitted and what was not permitted don't support torture. Nor do the congressmen - including Democrats -- who not only didn't ban these practices - they funded them.

J: You don't think the torture memos told these guys to go ahead and knock yourself out - or rather knock out your prisoners?

C: No one who reads the memos can think that. The media keep calling these "torture memos." They're really "anti-torture memos." They tell the CIA where they must draw the line. They instruct them not to cross from coercive interrogations - sometimes called "stress and duress" - to torture, a practice which is defined under law, illegal and prohibited. You can disagree about where the attorneys drew the line - but drawing it was indisputably what they were doing in these memos.

J: C'mon, Cliff. You're trying to tell me waterboarding is not torture?

C: It can be - it certainly was when the Japanese did it. If you want to, you can kill someone in minutes by waterboarding. But that's not the way it was done by American intelligence officials. They had to have physicians on hand empowered to stop it at any time. They had to tell their subjects they were not going to be killed - because if they didn't, that would cause them too much suffering. They could only pour water on them for up to 40 seconds at a time -unpleasant, sure, but not longer than they could hold their breath.

And let's remember: Only three individuals were waterboarded. Three. All of them al-Qaeda leaders concealing information about active terrorist plots. And by the way, no one has been waterboarded since 2003.

J: But answer my question: Is waterboarding torture? Yes or no?

C: Defining torture is not easy. A simple legal definition is that it "shocks the conscience." Cutting off Daniel Pearl's head on videotape - that shocks my conscience. Sending a child out as a suicide bomber - that shocks my conscience. People jumping off the World Trade Towers because they'd rather die that way than by burning - that shocks my conscience. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities, gagging for a few minutes and, as a result, providing information that saves lives, then going back to his cell for dinner and a movie - no, my conscience is not shocked by that.

J: There's no proof any of this was effective. In fact, a lot of people say such techniques don't produce good information.

C: Obama's top intelligence official, Admiral Dennis Blair, says these techniques produced "high-value information" that gave the U.S. government "a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."

Former CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently wrote: "As late as 2006, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those [coercive] interrogations."

Former CIA Director George Tenet has said, "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

Former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened."

Many other top intelligence officials say the same: coercive interrogations are the only way we have to get life-saving information out of trained, hardened al-Qaeda terrorists.

I think the evidence is clear. But if others do not, let's release the "effectiveness memos" as former Vice President Cheney has requested and let's release other data on this question. Perhaps at this point we need a national debate on security and morality.

J: How do we know softer methods wouldn't have worked?

C: Look, we know this: Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was captured. He said: "I want a lawyer." He didn't get one - I know some people think he deserved one but he's not a criminal defendant or an honorable prisoner of war. The Geneva Convention does not cover him - even Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder has said that.

Later, they asked KSM over and over: "Will there be another attack?" He would just smile and say: "Soon you will see." Continued...