Free Republic

An al-Qaida suspect who was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques at a secret CIA prison in early 2004 provided his interrogators with a clue — the nom de guerre of a mysterious courier — that ultimately proved crucial to finding and killing Osama bin Laden, officials said Wednesday. The CIA had approved use of sleep deprivation, slapping, nudity, water dousing and other coercive techniques at the now-closed CIA "black site" in Poland where the Pakistani-born detainee, Hassan Ghul, was held, according to a 2005 Justice Department memo, which cited Ghul by name. Two U.S. officials said Wednesday that some of...

The killing of Osama bin Laden was a great victory for the U.S. intelligence community, but it may well be the last one because of the Obama administration’s refusal to use tough tactics such as waterboarding on terror suspects, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey warns. The information that led U.S. agents to bin Laden could not have been obtained without stringent interrogation methods, Mukasey writes in The Wall Street Journal. “Consider how the intelligence that led to bin Laden came to hand. It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [KSM], who broke like a dam under the...

"But policies put in place by the very administration that presided over this splendid success promise fewer such successes in the future. Those policies make it unlikely that we'll be able to get information from those whose identities are disclosed by the material seized from bin Laden. The administration also hounds our intelligence gatherers in ways that can only demoralize them. Consider how the intelligence that led to bin Laden came to hand. It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed...

The unity and pride inspired by the killing of Osama Bin Laden has quickly deteriorated into a nasty debate over the effectiveness of torture. The administration is reportedly upset by this diversion. But President Barack Obama has nobody to blame but himself. While President George W. Bush took the nation down the dark path to torture, Obama ensured that it remained part of our national debate by failing to investigate and hold to account those who tortured. His failure to do so means that we now debate publicly whether or not to torture based on assessments of whether or not...

May 05, 2011 Debra Burlingame: Obama Says He Will Not Intervene With AG Holder Over Indictments of CIA Interrogators Just over FoxNews now. As the wife sister of one of the victims of 9/11 -- and a persistent critic of Obama's policies -- she used the meet-and-greet as a chance to ask Obama about an issue that concerns her. Holder's holding indictments over the heads of CIA interrogators -- the same ones who delivered bin Ladin to the SEALs. Burlingame asked him about that, and said "I know you can't tell him what to do" (which isn't really true), and...

Sen. John McCain denounced “advanced interrogation” methods like waterboarding Wednesday amid a growing debate over its effectiveness reopened by the killing of Osama bin Laden. McCain told reporters leaving an intelligence briefing for senators by CIA director Leon Panetta that he has seen no information so far to indicate that techniques like waterboarding factored significantly in the information gathering that led to bin Laden’s death. “So far I know of no information that was obtained, that would have been useful, by ‘advanced interrogation.’ In fact, according to published reports … some of the key people who knew about this courrier...

You may have seen today's above-the-fold Chronicle headline, "No torture used in manhunt" for Osama bin Laden. I don't see how that headline made it into the paper without an attribution that makes clear that the story is based on statements by Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Be it noted, the Chronicle uses the word torture to describe "enhanced interrogation techniques" or detention techniques, including, but not limited to, waterboarding.

Say Anything Blog goes on to point out that Congressman King still stands by the position that this beginning info came from those waterboarding moments. However, even if we accept the liberal spin, Say Anything goes on to point out the following: But really, this is all a moot point. Even it we stipulate that waterboarding, or “enhanced interrogation techniques,” had nothing at all do to with KSM giving up key details which lead to bin Laden’s capture the intelligence was still gathered at facilities (Guantanamo Bay and the CIA prisons in Europe) Obama wanted shut down. No matter how...

With all the renewed talk about waterboarding I thought it would be a good thing to open a thread where folks who have been waterboarded can sign and leave their comments for posterity.The rest of the Freepers can thank us for our service and sacrifice in perfecting this effective non-torture technique.And, there is not one person who has administered a session that has not themselves been "on the board".

Obama in 2009: "Now- I know some have argued thatbrutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep this country safe... but I could not disagree more" who we ought to be thanking Fact 1: Waterboarding found Bin Laden Fact 2: The interrogation took place at Gitmo Fact 3: Obama banned waterboarding in 2009...   then issued an Executive Order to close Gitmo! Who in their right mind would give even one quark of credit for enabling the American intelligence services to succeed in dispatching Osama Bin Laden to this sanctimonious strategic moron Barack Obama? He's opposed almost everything that enabled the CIA/Pentagon to ever even get close to Bin...

A member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee has told CNBC that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a direct result of enhanced interrogations."The information that eventually led us to this compound was the direct result of enhanced interrogations; one can conclude if we had not used enhanced interrogations, we would not have come to yesterday's action," US Senator Richard Burr in a telephone interview with CNBC. As a member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr was briefed on the attack on the compound that led to Bin Laden's death and believes the failure of Pakistani security forces...

The, ahem, "man-caused death" of the world's most infamous terrorist is marvelous news for our country.  It is a testament to the skill and dedication of our men and women in uniform, and to the tireless work of our intelligence agencies.  It completes the hard and sometimes frustrating efforts of two successive presidential administrations.  That justice has been visited upon bin Laden is an unmitigated, non-partisan good.  But as the media pieces together the puzzle of how yesterday's surgical mission came to be, a politically controversial fact has arisen -- the investigation into locating and neutralizing bin Laden gained early...

The view from (some) on the right in regard to the Bin Laden news is: waterboarding is vindicated. One GOP Congressman tweeted: Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now? The reason is that there's a direct line to be traced from the big news to data collected at GITMO -- data that was almost certainly collected under duress. Here's the key interrogation note regarding a courier going to Abottabad: Rest @ link

The left, led by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, has decried waterboarding as cruel, unusual and un-American. What is especially galling in the case of Pelosi is that she was apparently informed that our prisoners were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques but raised no objections until it was politically expedient for her to do so. If the killing of Osama Bin Laden proves anything, it’s that...

This capture and killing of Osama would not have been possible without Bush being in office. We water-boarded a handful of people, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being one. He is the guy who gave up the codename for the courier that led to this “justice being served.” …. Confirmation came through other interrogations at Guantanamo Bay — something Dems wanted to close as well.

Obama has broken just about all of his promises to supporters such as closing Gitmo, ending enhanced interrogation, start withdrawing troops from Iraq and end the war (not start another), try terrorists in U.S. courts… all lies Why? Maybe someone in the CIA or FBI showed him his real birth certificate?

The 11th-hour appointment on Tuesday of two new state water board members dramatically changes the stakes for a crucial vote tomorrow on a new sewage treatment permit for the Sacramento region.If approved as the board's staff recommends, the permit would impose strict new limits on the treated wastewater the capital region discharges into the Sacramento River near Freeport.

George W. Bush's dramatic claim in Decision Points that British lives were saved by the use of waterboarding terrorist suspects cuts through the fog surrounding the issue of waterboarding. Anti-Bush sentiment, as well as a general anti-Americanism, is rife in Britain. For years we have been assured by a smug nationalized BBC, and various left-wing media outlets all too keen to giggle like schoolchildren at President Bush's speech, that the former president is nothing more than a simple cowboy who did only bad things such as invade countries just for oil, drown black people, and torture poor, innocent foreigners. Luckily,...

An enterprising journalism school might want to start offering a one-day seminar in the effective staging of videotaped waterboarding. Getting under a wet towel is a surefire way to put your name out there. It’s sort of like the reality TV of journalism. Get a cheap camera, do something unpleasant, and welcome your new audience. Before today, I had never heard of the Sun’s Oliver Harvey. But now that he got wet and held his breath for 12 seconds while being videotaped he’s become the subject of this post. Harvey is the latest in a string of writers who’ve taken...

The CIA waterboarded 9/11 al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003, and fellow Al Qaeda commander Abu Zubayda at least 83 times in August 2002. Waterboarding was also used on a third al Qaeda detainee named Nashiri. Now, as  former President George W. Bush launches his new book Decision Points with interviews on network and cable TV shows, including NBC and Fox News, he has said publicly what most people assumed was the case all along. Bush personally authorized the CIA to use waterboarding on these monsters. As a result, they gave up life-saving intelligence that we would not...