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As soon as we started talking about torture on the level of efficacy, i.e. whether torture “worked,” it was inevitable that we’d have a day like this. The AP reports that intelligence from secret CIA prisons first uncovered the name of the courier which eventually led to the bin Laden compound. The information came from either, or both, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi, according to current and former officials.
Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed’s successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.
The news is sure to reignite debate over whether the now-closed interrogation and detention program was successful. Former president George W. Bush authorized the CIA to use the harshest interrogation tactics in U.S. history. President Barack Obama closed the prison system.
So this debate will be opened once again. Tyler Cowen kicks it off, saying “The moral and the practical do not always coincide, and perhaps we should be celebrating just a bit less.”
There’s an assumption made here that there exists a store of information that can only be gained through torture and not other means. There’s another assumption that all information gained through torture is correct. There’s a third assumption that this particular speck of information about the courier, which was refined and added to through detective work over time, was definitively gained through an act of torture. None of these assumptions have been proven.
But I agree with Kevin Drum that they’re not particularly relevant. The efficacy of torture is a kind of parlor game that you can play, but torture is not illegal because it does or does not work. It’s illegal because it’s a crime against humanity. It has been used over time by the worst regimes the world has ever known to debase and humiliate and destroy enemies. Civilized nations the world over have rejected it as a tactic. And they didn’t take a poll about whether or not it works when they rejected it. They rejected it because they have souls.
Another part of this is that, whatever the truth here, I think we can put the ticking-bomb scenario out the window now. KSM and al-Libi revealed this information years and years ago. Then the slow, deliberate work went into action to reconstruct the information and determine the whereabouts of bin Laden. It’s not sexy. It won’t play well on 24. But there was no scenario of some interrogator screaming “Where’s bin Laden!?!?” and some functionary revealing the information. That’s not how it works in the real world.
Finally, I don’t see how this scenario, however the truth comes out, proves the need to keep people locked up for years and years without charges. But maybe someone will explain that to me.
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This is one giant Psy Ops mission being conducted by the MIC to get the American public behind Obama again and set up Petraeus for 2016.
The “ding-dong the wicked witch is dead” routine being exhibited by so called liberals is further evidence of the lack of difference between the two political parties.
How convenient that Petraues was moved to the CIA just days ago and this information released to the masses of a “victory” just a few hours ago with some body dumped in the ocean “out of respect”.
No one will ever explain that to you. If you don’t know, you obviously aren’t a loyal, red-blooded American. /s
“President Obama closed the prison system.” Really? Like Guantanamo? Bagram? You believe what your president tells you? I HAD to see the reaction of Ms Elizabeth Hasselbeck on the “View” (oh I know-way to low brow for the likes of the erudite FDL-I am just a housewife myself) she was swooning over Obama. And oh yeah-her top secret contacts told her that the info on getting Bin Laden came from Guantanamo. YEAH! Torture works.
Obama is a filthy liar.
New Osama video coming out…really.
This scenario that they have created certainly will encourage acceptance of torture methods.
Fuck Obasama.
Don’t even hint at Osama Bin Laden zombie jokes.
I’m about up to here with zombies. No OBL vampires either.
you’re a true class act
Torture works when the rule of law doesn’t.
Doesn’t it indirectly prove that the emperor knows best and the rule of law is quaint? And we can’t let anyone out, regardless of innocence, because that would be embarrassing. What’s a few ruined dark-people’s lives verses our Sterling reputation? /s
Torture gets you all the lies that are fit to print.
Thanks, DDay, for excellent reporting per usual.
Yes, of course, yet another reason for killing (or pretending to kill, whichever) ObL right now is to gain further support from the citzenry for torture… bc “it works.”
Another reason for my cynical disgust. ptoui!
I’m gonna get flogged for this but McJoan has a piece over at DKos that gives credit to Marcy for her reporting on this:
“Let’s revisit history, again, by going to the best source, Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel.”
Republicans say torture led U.S. to bin Laden. Facts say otherwise.
2x
How many jobs did this create?
from NPR:
Oh hell, I don’t even believe it was bin Laden. I believe Bhutto. What reason did SHE ahve to lie? while I can think of a million our government would have.
It all stinks and the baby bots are jumping up and down.
And it’s true, this will legitimize torture in the eyes of the morally challenged. We’ve been living the corporate lie that the end justifies the means since Reagan
Oh, THAT’S so yesterday, now! /s
I waved an American flag around as I typed the question. Does that make it better?
lol… well, if, in fact, we are lucky enough to pull our troops and contractors OUT of Afghanistan, then I hate to say it, but this may result in job losses…
NOT that I don’t want the Warz to end, mind you. I’d rather my tax dollars be spent at home on infrastructure projects (how’s that? improve roads in the USA, rather than attempt to build roads in Afghanistant which end getting mired in corruption & never get built) or green technologies, or….
The programmed Obama drones have been reanimated, too. More militant, but just as devoid of genuine thought.
Maybe a Marsden Flag or Fort Moultrie. I always resented the tea party’s co-option of that Marsden flag s they’ve been treading all over US for years.
“Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides”.
Why would I believe current and former U.S. officials? Why?
Yeah, O’s a tough cookie now. No pansy, he!
In Dean Koontz’s book “Intensity” the serial killer who’s really ape-shit, says that the best place for people like him ( who he considers to be very evolved) would be in politics.
He tells the heroine ” Can you imagine the rush of sending all those people to their deaths? And you can get as graphic footage as you’d want. It wouldn’t be quite the same, but still……”
Oh, the Islamic response:
Islamic scholars criticize bin Laden’s sea burial
I want to see the long form of Obama’s serial killer certificate.
The ticking-bomb scenario is employed to justify the use of torture to prevent a future catastrophe.
But once torture is justified, it’s used to go after any important information, in this case the identity of the author of a past catastrophe.
The answer to the question of what constitutes victory in the GWOT is fleshed out by OBL. First—if we are to believe the narrative—by responding to 9/11 precisely as OBL wanted by embarking on an imperial crusade in the Middle East that exhausts the nation’s material resources. Second, the US pisses away its moral capital by ignoring international law, repressing freedom domestically and torturing both foreign and US citizens. “Smells like . . . victory!”
“To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder” –ALbert Einstein
I’m sure it’s doctored…;^)
Yes, that was surely brilliant thinking.
Part of Obama’s legacy, along with killing OBL, will be justifying torture in a way that Bad Cop George W. could not. Not only will GITMO not be closed, but also its methods will be exonerated.
FUCK Fraudbama.
Oh yeah, peace to the world.
I’m no expert on Islam, but that sea burial didn’t sound right to me. But I guess “gaffs” like that are inevitable when you fire your Arabic translators for being gay.
Snark aside, nothing about this sits well with me. I think they just wanted to get rid of the body ASAP–to not risk turning it over to a country that might be sympathetic to bin Laden’s followers or family, or give it to a government that would allow it to be buried in a public ceremony, or allow public mourning for him in relation to a traditional burial. Their lame attempt at observing Islamic law sounds like typical “reading” into religion practice what you need to support your political agenda. We Americans are good at that.
Par for the course with Obama: to “justify”, perpetuate, normalize and then inevitably institutionalize the worst things Bush put into effect.
Reply to onitgoes @ 19
In response to KrisAinCA @ 14 (show text)
…” if, in fact, we are lucky enough to pull our troops and contractors OUT of Afghanistan, then I hate to say it, but this may result in job losses…
NOT that I don’t want the Warz to end, mind you. I’d rather my tax dollars be spent at home on infrastructure projects (how’s that? improve roads in the USA, rather than attempt to build roads in Afghanistant which end getting mired in corruption & never get built) or green technologies, or….”
I wrestle with this scenario also. There has to be a way to make it work, though.
What will happen when we dump several hundred thousand troops back into the economy?
so considering that the Bin Laden Mansion-Resort was 6 miles from a Large-is Pakistani City, and Two miles from a Major Pakaistani Army Base, Headquarters for that entire region of Pakistan actually, the region that the Taliban is fighting to conquer actually, who did we torture to learn Bin Laden was there? President Asif Ali Zardari? The Mailman who was delivering Bin Ladens Checks and magazine subscriptions?
The Berkeley Blog: Bin Laden’s code name was “Geronimo” by @zunguzungu http://bit.ly/jcMvoA
It reinforces the torture works narrative, and doesn’t tell us much more.
High ideals we’ve never lived up to, not even during the Nuremberg trials when the accused took the stands with black eyes and such.
A fitting code name. And now, like Geronimo or Crazy Horse or Poncho Villa, the US has OBL’s virtual scalp on a pole.
Geronimo with Brzezinski.
The guy who live tweeted this accidentally is exposing some of the stories, like the helicopter having mechanical problems. They went searching door to door afterward.
The fact remains, everything that Pres. G. W. Bush put in place was right and correct..Whether you like it or not, think it right or wrong, it worked, and is still working. It is what it is..it is what is needed to control the current meyhem of today’s world..to keep America safe
Tell that to Katrina victims, and all of the jobless people, and those that have had their homes repossessed. No one has kept us safe from financial parasites. And lets not forget about those American Antrax deaths.
You’ve forgotten that GWB has been gone for 3 years and abandoned Afganistan when he left to destroy Iraq for Israel and divide up the Oil fields.
How about the 4 millon Iraqi refugees and 4.5 million orphans still in Iraq. Who knows how many dead Iraqi but it’s likely more than a million. But nobody kept them safe, did they? They aren’t us, and they aren’t white, so big deal, right?
A major problem is that the media refuses to call it what it is. I listened to NPR today and those asshats insisted on calling torture “enhanced interrogation techniques”. I wanted to pound my head on the steering wheel.
THE UNITED STATES WILL TORTURE FOR INFORMATION. Why won’t we just freaking say it?
If what I read somewhere else is true, a retired intelligence professional said the information from KSM was NOT produced during the waterboarding sessions. KSM gave the useful information many months later during conventional interrogation.
So not only did torture not work, it likely delayed the receipt of the information by many months.
Why don’t we stop doing it?
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. The commonest of fallacies among tyrants.
Fixed it.
Rumsfeld himself (who should know) has said it was not torture that led to OBL:
http://bit.ly/jSrpi8
SKF,
I used to keep track of the death toll in Iraqi quite closely after I got out of the Military post Gulf War I. Read all the research I could find. A conservative estimate at the end of the ’90s would be a million, most of whom died under the Clinton sanctions. It’s been awhile, but I would bet a reasonable number to date would be 1.5 million dead Iraqis. Coupled with the wounded and the refugees, it’s quite an impact on a nation of 27-30 million (depending on the date).