here's the spin: Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture

[spanone]

WASHINGTON — Did brutal interrogations produce the crucial intelligence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden?

As intelligence officials disclosed the trail of evidence that led to the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden was hiding, a chorus of Bush administration officials claimed vindication for their policy of “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding.

Among them was John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who wrote secret legal memorandums justifying brutal interrogations. “President Obama can take credit, rightfully, for the success today,” Mr. Yoo wrote Monday in National Review, “but he owes it to the tough decisions taken by the Bush administration.”

But a closer look at prisoner interrogations suggests that the harsh techniques played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden’s trusted courier and exposing his hide-out. One detainee who apparently was subjected to some tough treatment provided a crucial description of the courier, according to current and former officials briefed on the interrogations. But two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times — repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier’s identity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/politics/04torture.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

[Solly Mack]

1. Lack of prosecutions keep that "debate" alive.

All the rest is just fodder for commentary.

Torture is illegal. Arrest those who torture and then prosecute them for their crimes. This is the definitive answer to anyone's ignorant commentary about the "value" (cough cough) of torture. Prosecutions.

Pretend crimes weren't committed, act as if a war criminal had a good reason for committing a crime against humanity and you feed/promote/enable torture and torture apologists.

[spanone]

4. check this one out..Ex-CIA Counterterror Chief: ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Led U.S. to bin Laden

A former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, who was investigated last year by the Justice Department for the destruction of videos showing senior al-Qaeda officials being interrogated, says that the harsh questioning of terrorism suspects produced the information that eventually led to Osama bin Laden’s death.

Jose Rodriguez ran the CIA’s CounterTerrorism Center from 2002 to 2005 during the period when top al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) and Abu Faraj al-Libbi were taken into custody and subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” at secret black site prisons overseas. KSM was subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other techniques. Al Libbi was not waterboarded, but other EITs were used on him.

“Information provided by KSM and Abu Faraj al Libbi about Bin Laden’s courier was the lead information that eventually led to the location of compound and the operation that led to his death,” Rodriguez tells TIME in his first public interview. Rodriguez was cleared of charges in the video destruction investigation last year.

Rodriguez’s assertion drew criticism from the White House. “There is no way that information obtained by was the decisive intelligence that led us directly to bin Laden,” says National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor. “It took years of collection and analysis from many different sources to develop the case that enabled us to identify this compound, and reach a judgment that bin Laden was likely to be living there.”



Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/04/did-torture-get-the-us-osama-bin-laden/#ixzz1LOBQ7zwm

[malaise]

6. Jose Rodriguez should be in prison

:puke:

[Solly Mack]

7. I'm reading everything I can on it..saving the articles too. Thanks!

"EIT" = CYA phrase for torture.

[spanone]

8. the cockroaches are crawling out of the woodwork

these criminals see their chance to make themselves heroes

[Solly Mack]

9. Sure they are..and why not? (from their POV) What do they have to lose?

It's not like they'll go to prison for their war crimes. They can say anything they want and won't be touched. They can give any narrative because they know they won't be charged. Lack of prosecutions have long term consequences. One such consequence is that the guilty (and their supporters) get to claim torture is a good thing.

[themadstork]

2. Of course fucking John Yoo was one of them

How is that guy not in prison?

[opihimoimoi]

3. This teaches torture is OK...just wait till our boys get caught alive....this is wrong...

[seabeyond]

5. exactly. thanks spanone. and the one that gave description no mention thru torture but

much later, when they were not doing it. merely a detainee.

[alc]

10. doesn't matter. it's the wrong argument

Is torture right or wrong?

You can show cases where it worked. But were they necessary or would something else have worked? You can show cases were it failed, but would anything else have been better (they can pass misinformation in a friendly interrogation also). There's really no "win" in the "value" argument, but just by playing you are entering the "it may be acceptable if" discussion.