A great question. You could argue that if it were ineffective, we ourselves would have tired of it and tried something else.
On the other hand, you could argue that after 183 times, KSM certainly knew that he was likely going to survive the treatment, that he was not going to drown, etc, so that it seems likely that it started losing effectiveness.
You know, think about KSM for a moment. Here’s a guy who knew for over a year of the plan to take 4 planes full of unsuspecting people, families, etc, and end their lives. He felt he had the right to do that. Not only did he do nothing to stop it, he dedicated his life to facilitating that action. He was also involved in several other operations before and possibly after 9/11.
It was very reasonable after we captured him to expect that he knew of other operations being planned against the U.S. Perhaps some of those would have been even worse than 9/11. Perhaps some of those were stopped by information from one of the 183 sessions.
