Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times?

I think we can all agree Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is an evil man, one of the major architects of the 9/11 attacks, and a real enemy of the United States of America. I'm not even going to get into the debate about if waterboarding constitutes torture, and what - if anything - should be done to those that authorized its use or carried it out.

But even if we were to assume both that 1) he had valuable intelligence and 2) torture can get you that information reliably, doesn't 183 times seem like kind of a high number? I had always imagined we waterboarded these high value captives once or twice to scare the hell out of them, make them think they were going to drown, and hopefully get some useful intelligence from them. But 183 times? Seems like kind of a random number.

What happened after the 182nd time they waterboarded him where our interrogators thought "you know, I think just one more and he might crack?".

And what happened after the 183rd time where they thought "OK, I'm now sure that's everything we are going to get out of him"? Why not a 184th? You know, just to be extra sure? Maybe during the 183rd Khalid Sheikh Mohammed starting thinking "this is getting pretty old, maybe I should just tell them what they want."

The argument for waterboarding is that its an effective technique used to gather critical information. But if you have to do it 183 times, how effective is it exactly? You may get someone to confess to you just by sitting them in a warm jacuzzi and asking them the same question over and over and over until you get to 183 times - they might just get tired of the relentless nagging.

Reports are that Abu Zubaydah was "only" waterboarded 83 times. Does Khalid Sheikh Mohammed just roll his eyes whenever Zabaydah is bragging about what he went through to other prisoners? Does the Guinness Book of World Records have a category for this?

In all seriousness, I also wonder if these releases by the Obama administration will actually backfire, and in some way work to undercut the gut reaction many people have that waterboarding is, of course, torture? I mean if you can do something 266 times to 2 people, and both are still fine, how bad can it be?