Geez are people still going on that torture was what got the intel necessary to get OBL? If torture or enhanced interrogation worked why has it been specifically noted that KSM provided the info under standard interrogation techniques? Whoops just missed the Panetta statement. Haven't been following the news since yesterday. That said Panetta doesn't say that waterboarding was necessary and other sources say that the required intel came about not from waterboarding.
I am glad we have a President who has shown true leadership in giving the go ahead for this operation. A lot of people are getting credit for it now, but trust me, if it had failed only one man would be getting the blame. Good job AMERICAN BORN - Obama ! DD
It's simple logic. The las time KSM was waterboarded was years ago. If it was the torture that got the information it wouldn't have taken all these years to get Osama. The whole premise is silly. Add to that the direct statement that nothing from KSM that was used came from waterboarding. Contrast that with people trying to twist Panneta's words to mean that the waterboarding was helped. Any jury could look at the evidence and make a well reasoned judgement.
This is a bad way to represent what has happened. They've been tracking this individual courier for years now and were piecing his identity together for years before that. A statement made by people who had reason to misrepresent whether waterboarding gave them anything useful. The word "actionable" was attached as well to whether they got anything from KSM's waterboarding, a word that easily lends itself to "misunderstood." Leon Panneta is against waterboarding. The administration he serves is against waterboarding. When given the opportunity, after the capture of bin Laden, to say that waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques did not play a role in catching bin Laden, he would not go there.
Two can play that game. The two people with perhaps the most to gain by saying waterboarding led to OBL's death didnot make that claim at all: John Woo: "President Obama can take credit, rightfully, for the success ... but he owes it to the tough decisions taken by the Bush administration," John Yoo, a former U.S. Justice Department official in the Bush White House, wrote in National Review. Dick Cheney: "I would assume that the enhanced interrogation program that we put in place produced some of the results that led to bin Laden's ultimate capture," Cheney said of the George W. Bush administration in an interview with Fox News Monday. "I don't have the kind of detailed insight now that I would have had two or three years ago. Basically what I have seen to date about this operation is what has been in the newspapers." Note neither claim any direct connection between the waterboarding or any other "enhanced interrogation" and OBL's death. Instead, veiled assertions and assumptions.
hold on a second... am i to understand that the very people who authorized torture (an act punishable by death under united states law) are now claiming that torture works? why would they do this?
you forgot Rummy: “I’m told there was some confusion today on some programs, even one on Fox, I think, suggesting that I indicated that no one who was waterboarded at Guantanamo provided any information on this. That’s just not true. What I said was, no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo by the U.S. military. In fact, no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo, period. Three people were waterboarded by the CIA away from Guantanamo and then later brought to Guantanamo. And in fact, as you pointed out, the information that came from those individuals was critically important.” — Donald Rumsfeld Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/03/i...en-dont-listen-to-leon-panetta/#ixzz1LPCdowNS
huh? the cheney quote you provided claims exactly that. not to be snarky, but did you even read it? and when john yoo says we "owe it to the tough decisions made by the bush administration" do you not think he was referring to the fact that they approved illegal torture methods?
For those still reluctant or grudgingly giving Obama credit consider all that could've gone wrong with making the decision to launch a special forces operation. As I said in another thread I have no doubt that any of the major candidates who ran for President in 2008 would've gone after OBL but what was truly ballsy was how Obama decided to take that action. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42892254 [rquoter]Bin Laden mission was big risk for Obama 'When you go into something like this, there are no guarantees ... things go wrong,' former SEAL says [/rquoter] More at link. Consider the specter of the Desert 1 and Blackhawk down incidents and how those dogged previous Democratic presidents. Obama could've taken the easier route and ordered an airstrike and probably no one would've criticized him for it. He instead decided to take a much tougher route by ordering a special forces mission. If this had gone wrong I have no doubt that he would be pilloried by the press and public.
I don't think the head of the senate intel committee has any more or less reason to be dishonest than Panetta about whether they got intel that lead to OBL from waterboarding. I have no doubt KSM talked under waterboarding. He probably said whatever they wanted him to say. Maybe the reason that it took years was that they had to sort through all the crap he said and sort it out from the good stuff because he was being tortured and just started saying what he could to get it to stop. Panetta not denying something is different than saying it did happen.
The quote says Cheney *assumes* that it produced *some* of the results and then says he is basing it only on what he read in the paper. The Yoo quote could mean anything. He seems to have been purposefully vague instead of saying "see, torture works."
A whole lot of sour grapes in here because Obama was able to make the tough decision to rectify the botched job of his predecessor and get Osama. Thanks for being the biggest decider, President Obama.
LOL - he also didn't deny his role in the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping, Roswell, or the Kennedy Assassination. The fact that basso is the only person who thinks his garbled statement in which he's responding to about 3 questions at once is dispositive by negative implication of an affirmative fact, that has been explicitly denied by several others should probably tell you something.
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