No House resolution honoring SEAL's bin Laden mission

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

They discovered the nickname of Bin Laden's body guard/primary courier at Guantanamo. It was a long complicated investigation from there.

Well a number of high ranking officials said the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques played a part in finding Bin Laden, among them were Leon Panetta, CIA Chief, who stated on NBC's Brian Williams that the intell obtained via enhanced interrogations helped the agency find Bin Laden. Jose Rodriguez also stated for Time Magazine that such techniques made the operation possible. He ran the CIA counterterrorism center from 2002 - 2005. So I guess they lied.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Well a number of high ranking officials said the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques played a part in finding Bin Laden, among them were Leon Panetta, CIA Chief, who stated on NBC's Brian Williams that the intell obtained via enhanced interrogations helped the agency find Bin Laden.

You can spin his statement pretty much any way you want. He doesn't say the water boarding helped. He said it happened.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: I'd like to ask you about the sourcing on the intel that ultimately led to this successful attack. Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after bin Laden?

LEON PANETTA: You know Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information, and that was true here. We had a multiple source -- a multiple series of sources -- that provided information with regards to this situation. Clearly, some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees. But we also had information from other sources as well. So, it's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got.

WILLIAMS: Turned around the other way, are you denying that waterboarding was in part among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?

PANETTA: No, I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I'm also saying that, you know, the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.

WILLIAMS: So, finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques -- which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years -- that includes waterboarding?

PANETTA: That's correct.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by glatt

You can spin his statement pretty much any way you want. He doesn't say the water boarding helped. He said it happened.

No, he was purposefully vague. He never confirmed nor denied that it was specifically waterboarding that was what got the confessions. He said Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. That can be a whole list of things. He said those techniques contributed to the capture. Nothing more, nothing less. And you can spin it anyway you want, actionable information was gathered, albeit, delayed, that lead to the eventual killing of OBL.