[lhopp77]

If Torture Led to Bin Laden, Does America Approve?
May 04, 2011
Stars and Stripes|by Megan McCloskey

WASHINGTON -- Details about how covert agents tracked down Osama bin Laden on Sunday are still sketchy and incomplete, but that the first bread crumb in the intelligence trail possibly came from prisoners subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” is reigniting the debate over torture.


A senior White House official told reporters on Sunday that post-9/11 detainees gave up the nom de guerre of a trusted bin Laden courier, intelligence that eventually, years later, led to the U.S. discovery of bin Laden’s whereabouts in Pakistan.

A few media outlets have reported that the nickname came from captured top al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both men were held for a time at secret CIA prisons overseas and subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, and other harsh physical treatments that were approved by President George W. Bush. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, the government has disclosed.

This has led supporters of such interrogation methods to claim validation for their value. They were formally banned by President Obama in 2009, but the CIA had previously abandoned the techniques under the weight of intense scrutiny.

Republican Rep. Steve King from Iowa tweeted Monday: “Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?”


Very interesting!

Lee