Figuring out that FOX NEWS really is Fair and Balanced.


Thank You
2011 = 28

I do give him two thumbs up for giving the order to waste that piece of human garbage!

FOX has consistently outscored MSNBC and CNN for years in independent reviews of programming and content.

Nice of you to finally notice something others have known for years.

McCain says torture did not lead to bin Laden

McCain says torture did not lead to bin Laden

'This is a moral debate. It is about who we are,' says Ariz. Republican, former POW

WASHINGTON — Waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques were not a factor in tracking down Osama bin Laden, a leading Republican senator insisted Thursday.

Sen. John McCain, who spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, also rejected the argument that any form of torture is critical to U.S. success in the fight against terrorism.

Trump: 'Torture' led to catching bin Laden
In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, the Arizona Republican said former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and others who supported those kind of measures were wrong to claim that waterboarding al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, provided information that led to bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

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Updated 11 minutes ago 5/12/2011 6:31:51 PM +00:00 McCain says torture did not lead to bin Laden
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..McCain spoke with an unrivaled record on the issue. He's the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee who consistently challenged the Bush administration and Vice President Dick Cheney on the use of torture and a man who endured brutal treatment during the Vietnam War.

Story: Obama broaches bin Laden death at campaign event
He said he asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and that the hunt for bin Laden did not begin with fresh information for Mohammed. In fact, the name of bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, came from a detainee held in another country.

"Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information," McCain said. He called on Mukasey and others to correct their misstatements.

A call to Mukasey at his New York law firm was not immediately returned Thursday. Mukasey was President George W. Bush's last attorney general.

.On Thursday, McCain also penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post on the topic, saying, "I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading."

He concluded, "This is a moral
debate. It is about who we are."

Last week, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the U.S. got vital information from waterboarding that led directly to bin Laden.

McCain said he opposes waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning, and any form of torture tactics. He said that they could be used against Americans and that their use damages the nation's character and reputation.

"I do not believe they are necessary to our success in our war against terrorists, as the advocates of these techniques claim they are," he said.

"Ultimately, this is about morality. What is at stake here is the very idea of America — the America whose values have inspired the world and instilled in the hearts of its citizens the certainty that, no matter how hard we fight, no matter how dangerous our adversary, in the course of vanquishing our enemies we do not compromise our deepest values," he said. "We are America, and we hold ourselves to a higher standard. That is what is really at stake."

McCain did reject the idea of prosecuting any U.S. officials for using interrogation tactics in the past.

McCain's remarks drew immediate praise from several Democratic senators who have been at political odds with him in past campaigns.

"No one in the Senate could have given this speech," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., "He speaks with personal knowledge. He still remembers the most dark nights when he tried to rest, when he was tortured brutally."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said McCain's opinions may not be the popular view, but they were the right ones.

"Thank you for your leadership," Durbin said.

.Sponsored links.Discuss: McCain says torture did not lead to bin Laden

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. speaks at the 41st Washington Conference on the Americas on Wednesday at the State Department in Washington.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43007276/ns/politics-more_politics

Exclusive: Private letter from CIA chief undercuts claim torture was key to killing Bin Laden

Exclusive: Private letter from CIA chief undercuts claim torture was key to killing Bin Laden

By Greg Sargent


CIA chief Leon Panetta has written a private letter to Senator John McCain that offers the most detailed answer yet to questions about the relationship between torture and Osama Bin Laden’s death — and undercuts the claim by former Bush administration officials that torture was key to Bin Laden’s killing.

The letter has not been released publicly but was sent my way by a source. Marie Harf, a CIA spokesperson, confirmed the letter’s authenticity to me, but declined further comment.

Last week, Senator McCain published a widely discussed Op ed in the Washington Post calling into question claims that torture was instrumental in tracking down Bin Laden. McCain cited Panetta as a source for his information, but didn't release any material provided to him by Panetta, and conservatives like former Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey subsequently dismissed McCain’s account. The CIA has not publicly taken sides in the dispute.

But Panetta’s letter, dated May 9th, bears out McCain’s version of events.

To be sure, there are a couple of lines in the letter that conservatives will seize on to bolster their case. But the overall thrust of the letter clearly undercuts their larger version of events.

The case being made by conservatives — that Bin Laden’s death vindicates torture — was spelled out last week by former Bush
AG Mukasey in an Op ed in the Wall Street Journal. Mukasey argued that the trail to Bin Laden “began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.”

The account in Panetta’s letter clearly contradicts this. Here are the operative three paragraphs from the letter, which represents a response from Panetta to McCain’s earler request for information about torture and Bin Laden’s death:


Nearly 10 years of intensive intelligence work led the CIA to conclude that Bin Ladin was likely hiding at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. there was no one “essential and indispensible” key piece of information that led us to this conclusion. Rather, the intelligence picture was developed via painstaking collection and analysis. Multiple streams of intelligence — including from detainees, but also from multiple other sources — led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was at this compound. Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the “only timely and effective way” to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively. What is definitive is that that information was only a part of multiple streams of intelligence that led us to Bin Ladin.

Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier’s role were alerting.

In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.

Emphasis mine. Panetta’s account contradicts Mukasey’s claim that the trail to Bin Laden “began” with disclosures from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed that were achieved through the “pressure" of torture.

Panetta’s account also represents public, on-the-record confirmation from the CIA of — and adds new detail to — a careful and thorough investigation by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage of the New York Times, which was based on anonymous sources and concluded that torture “played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden’s trusted courier and exposing his hide-out.” Shane and Savage also quoted unnamed sources claiming torture resulted in bad information — also confirmed in Panetta’s letter.


Conservatives will argue that little is known about the “other intelligence means” used to secure the courier’s name or whereabouts. They will also point out that Panetta’s letter also indicates that some detainees who “provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role” had been subjected to torture. In saying this, Panetta is expanding on an earlier claim in an interview that torture, waterboarding included, produced info that played some kind of role at some point in tracking Bin Laden.

But if anything, Panetta’s letter actually downplays the info achieved through torture, is inconclusive on how useful it was in the end, and states that we can’t know if that info would have been achievable through other means. While the emphasis of Panetta’s account may be intended to be in line with the administration’s anti-torture position, his downplaying of the role of torture is an important addition to the public record.

In the end, we may never be able to establish with total certainty the precise nature of the relationship between torture and the killing of Bin Laden. But for now, Panetta’s account — the most extensive public accounting we now have — simply doesn’t square with claims that torture was key to getting him, which would vindicate Bush’s torture policies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/exclusive-private-letter-from-cia-chief-undercuts-claim-torture-was-key-to-killing-bin-laden/2011/03/03/AFLFF04G_blog.html#pagebreak
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/exclusive-private-letter-from-cia-chief-undercuts-claim-torture-was-key-to-killing-bin-laden/2011/03/03/AFLFF04G_blog.html#pagebreak