UPDATED: Interrogation expert: Waterboarding set back bin Laden hunt by a couple of years
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UPDATED: Interrogation expert: Waterboarding set back bin Laden hunt by a couple of years
UPDATE: Here's the story, which is getting a wildly enthusiastic response so far (thank you!). Meanwhile, because so many of my commenters and emailers have expressed an open mind about both the effectiveness and the morality of torture, I thought you'd also like to read this excellent editorial in the New York Times:
There are many arguments against torture. It is immoral and illegal and counterproductive. The Bush administration’s abuses — and ends justify the means arguments — did huge damage to this country’s standing and gave its enemies succor and comfort. If that isn’t enough, there is also the pragmatic argument that most experienced interrogators think that the same information, or better, can be obtained through legal and humane means.
No matter what Mr. Yoo and friends may claim, the real lesson of the Bin Laden operation is that it demonstrated what can be done with focused intelligence work and persistence.
Here's a tease from my article in tomorrow's Daily News about the tortured debate over torture (link whenever it goes online):
Indeed, one former senior Air Force interrogator from the Iraq war, who has written two books under the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, told the Daily News last night he believes that the waterboarding of top bin Laden aides in the early 2000s may have actually slowed down the search by a couple of years.
Alexander — author of the recent Kill or Capture: How a Special Operations Task Force Took Down a Notorious al Qaeda Terrorist — said that waterboarding bin Laden aide Khalid Sheikh Mohammed phony leads about the terrorist’s courier, and a second al-Qaeda higher-up gave agents a fake name. “That led to the CIA wasting time and resources,” he said.
Do I mention yesterday that torture doesn't work, in addition to being illegal and immoral. I believe that I did.
Regarding the Leon Panetta comments that so many of you have made sure that I know about, I think the CIA director's actual words are pretty ambiguous and inconclusive (and Michael Smerconish, a longtime advocate of, ahem, "enhanced interrogation" agrees; he told me in an email for my article that "Panetta seemed to hedge with Brian Williams"). Remember, Panetta sees his mission as improving the morale of agents who were ordered to conduct the Bush-era torture -- which is why he's not the torture-blaster he was before taking the post. He also said it's an "open question" whether torture produces intel you can't get otherwise; Alexander told me what other skilled interrogators have also said: That torture produces lies and useless information.
But like Journey always said, don't stop believin', you torture enthusiasts out there.
Comment removed.
"And I'm sure you can find just as many interrogation experts who believe that waterboarding helped catch bin Laden. So what's your point?" . . . . . By all means, name them. And find at least one that was a more successful interrogator than Ali Soufan.
Too funny.
Petraeaus speaks of the counterproductivity of using torture. He gives his reasons based on moral and legal principles, as well as his experience on the ground leading the fight against terrorism. You can't make any arguments that refute his informed perspective, so you wrongly assert that I ever anything negative about Petraeus. As if, somehow, even if I ever did say anything negative about Petraeus, that would change the validity of his perspective.
Weak, rysaqr - even for you my friend that is weak tea.— Talking point sleuth- Here's a nice and detailed summary for our simplistic "torture works" buddies.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42906157/ns/world_news-death_of_bin_laden/
It concludes with this little bit:
--snip--
But it wasn’t until 2007 — four years after Mohammed had been waterboarded — that they were able to figure out his identity. And it wasn’t until 2009 that they were able to locate him in Pakistan, thanks to electronic intercepts of cell phone calls and emails. At that point, Pakistani operatives working for the CIA began to trail him and eventually traced him to the compound in Abbottabad where he and the al-Qaida leader were killed on Sunday.
"If it really had been waterboarding that had produced the key piece of information that led us to Osama bin Laden," one U.S. official said, "we would have been having this conversation years earlier — not in 2011."
--snip--
Right. Torture works because four years after KSM was waterboarded, and four years later after looking for OBL in caves they began to figure out the identify of OBL's courier, and after another two years of looking for OBL in caves, they found him in an urban compound: because, you know, "torture works."
It's amazing what you can prove if you are willing to throw out any evidence that contradicts your starting premises.
Hilarious.— Talking point sleuth - Be careful when you introduce facts into a debate with our right wing friends. It's like you're torturing them with the truth. Fun to watch the batsh*t crazy responses though.
- ]]]=== By all means, name them ====[[[
There's a reason why the Bush administration had to bring in novices to conduct the interrogations; experienced interrogators refused to use torture, citing legal and moral reasons as well as the counterproductivity and unreliability of the methods.— Talking point sleuth - You gotta love the argument that torture works *BECAUSE* it produces wrong information.
--snip--
Slahi, according to two government reports, was subjected to steadily escalating rough interrogations approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Among them: being threatened with death, deprived of sleep, exposed to “variable lighting patterns” and subjected to blasting rock music, including Drowning Pool’s “Bodies,” with its chorus of “Let the bodies hit the floor!” according to a detailed account in the Washington Post.
Yet when Slahi was questioned about the Kuwaiti courier, he told a story that turned out to be false: He reported that Abu Ahmed “was wounded while fleeing Tora Bora and later died in the arms” of another detainee, according to this Defense Department Document.
When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in early 2003, he was flown to a CIA black site prison in Poland and waterboarded 183 times. At first, he wasn’t even asked about Abu Ahmed. When he was months later, he described Abu Ahmed as a minor figure who was “retired,” said the U.S. official. “He played down his significance.” He was, said another U.S. official, protecting Abu Ahmed, refusing to give up “the crown jewels.”
No such person
In 2005, when the CIA captured Mohammed’s replacement, Abu Faraj Al-Libi, and subjected him to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” he too misled his interrogators, two U.S. officials said. He told them that bin Laden’s “designated” courier and “official messenger” was another man: Malawi Abd al Khaliq Jan. CIA officials later concluded that no such person even existed — and that Al Libi, like Mohammed, was trying to conceal Abu Ahmed’s role in order to protect bin Laden.
--snip--
— Talking point sleuth -
"Torture works" because under torture, interrogators got incorrect information - and years later, when they got different information from traditional interrogation techniques, and realized that there was a discrepancy from the wrong information they got from waterboarding, they realized that the people being tortured were lying to cover something up, so it must be important.
YOU SEE WILL! "TORTURE WORKS!!!!111!11!11"— Talking point sleuth - It must be a miserable existence. I believe many of our torture enthusiasts suffered torture themselves as children. I see this syndrome all the time in child welfare and spousal abuse cases.
- One does have to wonder what kind of a person feels compelled to argue that torture works - because it produces incorrect information.
My guess is that people who are so compelled get a thrill from imagining uniformed men stripping other men, tying them up, that sort of thing.
What else could explain it?— Talking point sleuth - Comment removed.
- Comment removed.
Hey Will, another great, fantastic! post on the subject of sky kittens and unicorns, but while you have been working overtime on getting the "it wasn't torture it wasn't torture it wasn't torture" story out there, the entire White House story-line of what happened on Sunday is unravelling. It seems to me that a real "journalist" would be interested in getting a straight record on what transpired in Abbottabad. "The WH Goes Silent on bin Laden raid"..."an information clampdown that followed fitful attempts to craft a riveting narrative about the killing of al-Qaeda's leader."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-goes-silent-on-bin-laden-raid/2011/05/04/AF1v87rF_story.html?hpid=z1— m13sully- I liked this line from the article: "“Nothing about the broader point about bin Laden is inaccurate,” said National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor. “He is someone who has been sitting comfortably in a home in a suburb while he counseled others to engage in fights.".........aside from the home being in the suburbs couldn't the same be said about Obama, Bush, and any other U.S. President during war times??
— bird11 
I don't know if torture worked or did not work in this case. I do know that during the Vietnam war, John McCain was tortured and he sang like a canary.— alotatea
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