Mukasey: Yes, waterboarding helped lead to bin Laden
It’s a fact that by now only the left’s bitter enders will deny, but it’s nice hearing it from the former US Attorney General.
It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information—including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.
That regimen of harsh interrogation was used on KSM after another detainee, Abu Zubaydeh, was subjected to the same techniques. When he broke, he said that he and other members of al Qaeda were obligated to resist only until they could no longer do so, at which point it became permissible for them to yield. “Do this for all the brothers,” he advised his interrogators.
Abu Zubaydeh was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of 9/11. Bin al Shibh disclosed information that, when combined with what was learned from Abu Zubaydeh, helped lead to the capture of KSM and other senior terrorists and the disruption of follow-on plots aimed at both Europe and the United States.
Another of those gathered up later in this harvest, Abu Faraj al-Libi, also was subjected to certain of these harsh techniques and disclosed further details about bin Laden’s couriers that helped in last weekend’s achievement.
And that plus other information, both new and corroborating what had already been learned, led to bin Laden’s courier, which led to Bin Laden, which led to bin Laden experiencing kinetic military action and taking a permanent swim. It was Bush’s gutsycall.com to treat captured terrorists as unlawful enemy combatants, not high grade criminals, that led over time to the intelligence on bin Laden.
Question: Is this poster justified? I say yes. Yes it is.
When the loudest critic of your policies achieves his greatest success because of them.
Torture works! Think about it. How else can you explain perfectly rational people, of both sexes, during the inquisition, admitting to intimate nocturnal relationships with the incubus, the succubus, and the devil? And after undergoing the thumb screw and the rack, all they had to look forward to was burning at the stake, but they still gave it up. I mean given that torture works for the make believe and error, then obviously it works to establish the facts and the truth; especially if we provide the “victims” with three hots and a flop, the best health care going, the best legal assistance, and further self indoctrination in the religion (Islam) of their choice. I’m reminded of the movie The Mouse That Roared. Declare war on the United States, get tortured, surrender, and we’ll double your gross national product with development aide so you can do it again in the name Allah. Now there is a description of insanity; expecting a different outcome is the definition of an idiot.
Say, isn’t Obama still conducting a criminal investigation into the interrogations that gave us bin Laden?
CIA proponents of “enhanced interrogation” and FBI opponents of torture disagreed on these techniques, but both agreed that Abu Zubaydeh gave information on Khalid Sheikh Mohammad & Jose Padilla before the CIA took over the interrogations and used harsh, coercive techniques: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/17/AR2007121702151.html
I think John McCain answered your desire to believe George Bush and Dick Cheney’s techniques today on the floor of the Senate. I am a military officer and we should never ever torture. It is not what the US does even if done to ourselves from others.. We are a better country.