What About Enhanced Interrogation Now?

Maybe enhanced interrogation techniques are not so bad after all.

President Obama has never been a big fan of enhanced interrogation techniques used on captured enemy combatants.  Despite the fact that his own Administration has acknowledged that those techniques do yield valuable intelligence he has yet to personally support the measures.  Along the same lines Obama made it a goal to close Guantanamo Bay, the location where most captured terrorists are held and interrogated, but has allowed it to stay open.  Why you ask?  Because they are effective and necessary, even if the President does not verbally admit it.

The timeline of the intelligence that lead us to the doorsteps of OBL’s compound is pretty sketch, at least based on the little public information that is available.  We do know a few things for certain.  The trail started with intelligence that came from al-Qaida’s #3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  Mohammed was one of the few detainees that was given EI.  Eventually, Mohammed gave up the nickname of several of OBL’s couriers.  Meanwhile it was discovered that another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, was to succeed Mohammed an an operational leader in al-Qaida.  Knowing that only OBL could have given such a promotion intelligence agencies focused on finding the real name of the courier.  In short, once they located the courier they traced him back to the compound that was assumed to hold OBL – and it did!

Obviously there are multiple pieces of the puzzle that were put together that lead to OBL’s death.  No one single piece of evidence seems to be the smoking gun.  The big question surrounding the intelligence is did EI techniques help extract some of the key pieces of information that lead to the eventual outcome.  So far that is uncertain without knowing the exact timeline of what information was known and when it was known.  At the same time it is a fact that Mohammed did go through EI such as waterboarding.  Even if the couriers name was not given up during that process it is arguable that it helped cause Mohammed to give it up at a later time.  An indisputable fact is that this whole process as a means to track down OBL was started under President Bush.

If you are entertained easily you will enjoy watching WHPS Jay Carney trying to evade the tough question about the EI and OBL:

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