Posted on 05/03/2011 12:46:59 AM PDT by CutePuppy
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 to find the al-Qaeda leader sooner will be a strain on US relations.
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(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
In the end...it’s a little piece of 1-star commentary from some guy being interrogated that leads onto another piece of 1-star commentary....and then a bit of luck. This entire method of couriers is suspect now. Since no one trusts cellphones anymore....courier is the only method left and some big name guys back in Saudi Arabia who help to fund all this business...have to be worried about their future.
Rumsfeld said this wasn’t true.
kind of sort of but not really. He said there was no water boarding in GITMO. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spent three years in a prison outside of the US (Romania I think) before he was taken to GITMO. The red cross is on record as having accused us of torturing him during that time through water boarding and other harsh interrogation techniques.
2. 2005 - Waterboarding reveals courier's name, contacts
Obama opposed waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation" techniques and pledged to ban them.
3. NSA wiretapping intercepted call with location of Bin Laden's lair
Obama criticized the use of NSA "warrantless wiretapping"
'Nuff said. Thank you President Bush!
Carrier pigeons?
to read...
BAD - Waterboarding muslim terrorists
Leads to anti-America street demonstrations by leftists
GOOD - Killing muslim terrorists for Obama
Leads to pro-Obama street celebrations by leftists
Are you sure? Rumsfeld said we didn’t waterboard anybody at GITMO. There are other forms of enhanced interrogation that we could have used.
Rumsfeld said we didnt waterboard anybody at GITMO
He didn’t say we didn’t waterboard in Romania.
Exactly.
Its seems to me that Obama opposed these techniques, and if he had had his way they never would have been used and Bin Laden would not have been killed.
Therefore Obama deserves no credit for the killing of Bin Laden.
So switched over to the “rats” at MSNBC. Countessa is interviewing some guy who says that all the water boarding of KSM had nothing to do with any of this. That even though it was over 100 times, the info came from people that were lower on the totem pole. Amazing what you see on the “other” station.
From Phone call by Kuwaiti courier led to bin Laden - Breitbart/AP, by Adam Goldman, 2011 May 02
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in the CIA's secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was close to bin Laden. After the CIA captured al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he confirmed knowing al-Kuwaiti but denied he had anything to do with al-Qaida. Then in 2004, top al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, someone crucial to the terrorist organization. In particular, Ghul said, the courier was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational commander. It was a key break in the hunt for in bin Laden's personal courier. "Hassan Ghul was the linchpin," a U.S. official said. Finally, in May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaida. ..... < snip > ..... It took years of work before the CIA identified the courier's real name: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... The violent final minutes were the culmination of years of intelligence work. Inside the CIA team hunting bin Laden, it always was clear that bin Laden's vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let al-Qaida foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life.
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti means Abu Ahmed born in Kuwait, of course, but it doesn't mean it made it easier to locate him.
Took a lot of time and connecting the dots, and the liberals' disclosure and negative hype about NSA electronic surveillance capabilities led to Osama insisting on using no phones or computer communications near him. It's only in August of 2010 when Ahmed had a phone conversion with someone who was monitored by U.S. intelligence, he was identified, located and and put under surveillance.
So Obama is taking credit for the timing of the events previous administration had no control of, but which set up all the personnel, logistics, processes and conditions to execute?
As FReeper Lancelot Jones pointed out in his excellent post on another thread Bin Laden Death Will Not Boost Obama: Expert, #37, he kind of does deserve a "credit," in a negative sort of way:
It was his failure to deliver his own campaign promised that allowed the men and women of the greatest military in the world to gather the necessary intelligence to find bin Laden and terminate him (as well as anyone within shooting distance) with extreme prejudice. The killing of OBL has been, without a doubt, the most spectacularly successful unintended consequence of one of a long list of Obama's failures to date. ..... I wish to thank President Obama for NOT going through with his campaign promises to shut down Guantanamo, and pull the troops out of the Middle East.
That's the sort of negative credit, backhanded praise that I would like see conservative / Republican politicians adopt and use more often, especially dealing with the media. The style makes the point(s) well and is difficult to criticize, and Rummy and Condi Rice were experts at this. Watching many Republicans or conservatives speaking publicly is often impossible without cringing.
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