WikiLeaks bombshell: Intel leading to bin Laden came from al Qaeda terrorist captured in Iraq

And, enhanced interrogation was used on him.  Hooooboy. The information led to the courier, Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti.

“Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti was a senior al-Qaeda facilitator and subordinate of [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]. Al-Kuwaiti worked in the al-Qaeda media house operated by [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] in Kandahar and served as a courier.”

The file suggests that the courier’s identity was provided to the US by another key source, the al-Qaida facilitator Hassan Ghul, who was captured in Iraq in 2004 and interrogated by the CIA. Ghul was never sent to Guantanamo but was believed to have been taken to a prison in Pakistan.

He told the Americans that al-Kuwaiti travelled with bin Laden. The file states:

“Al-Kuwaiti was seen in Tora Bora and it is possible al-Kuwaiti was one of the individuals [al-Qahtani] reported accompanying UBL [bin Laden] in Tora Bora prior to UBL’s disappearance.”

The picture that emerges from al-Qahtani’s Guantanamo file supports statements given in the last 24 hours by US officials, who named Ghul as the “linchpin” in the intelligence operation to find bin Laden. …

The CIA gained crucial information confirming the role of al-Kuwaiti from two inmates at Guantanamo Bay – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi.

Some of the information came from the “black sites” in Europe. It all led over time to developing an operational picture, and then a phone call led to the man who led to bin Laden.

There will be a chicken-and-egg question here: Did we catch Ghul because he was in Iraq, or because we were in Iraq? Regardless, we caught him, in Iraq, and found out what he knew via not playing nice with him and having a King & Spalding lawyer go over his Miranda rights with him.

So this is the combination that unlocked bin Laden’s whereabouts: Taking the fight to the terrorists and leaning on local governments led to KSM, al-Libbi and others. Enhanced interrogation at Gitmo and elsewhere led to information, information which was shaped at least in part after the capture of Ghul in Iraq. So pretty much everything the left denounced about Bush’s prosecution of the war led to bin Laden.