# Did waterboarding help kill Bin Laden? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 2, 2011, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487 "2011-05-02T16:54:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/21 "2011-05-02T18:13:06Z")
> [@G-SE](#): > > Well, I guess, yes, but with regards to this particular case, which looks more and more like an actual “torture led to Bin Laden” rather than a hypothetical situation with unproven results. “More and more”? Saying the same thing over and over again doesn’t mean you’ve given more information than before, and an unnamed CIA official usually isn’t the best source of data when it comes to the effectiveness of waterboarding. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/22 "2011-05-02T18:14:33Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Outside of his own statements, drawn under torture, is there any reason to believe that KSM was really some sort of major powerhouse in AlQ? We knew who he was before he was captured. As for the OP, I’m definitely with the “so what”? crowd. Torture is wrong, and there are better ways to get this type of information anyway. This ticking time bomb is a comic book hypothetical, and not what we should base our day-to-day operational methods on. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/23 "2011-05-02T18:16:46Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It doesn’t much matter if it did; torture is unacceptable for any reason. Nor do I see any reason to believe that a bunch of people who have a history of lying are telling the truth this time. Hmmm … perhaps if we _tortured_ them they’d tell the truth! ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/24 "2011-05-02T18:17:00Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > We knew who he was before he was captured… Ah! Well, good. May I be assured that I have this on your authority, all doubt banished? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/25 "2011-05-02T18:23:47Z")
Nobody’s saying Mohammed just gave up the information this week. I’m entirely against waterboarding because it’s torture, but that’s a bit of a strawman. The general idea is that the U.S. was interested in one of the couriers who was killed with bin Laden, learned his name in 2007, and gradually worked out where he was over the last couple of years. More recently - I think in August - a different courier was captured and it became clear that the aforementioned courier was living with bin Laden in Pakistan. I don’t know who captured him, but if it was Pakistan, for example, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t tortured. If memory serves, Obama has foresworn those kinds of tactics. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/26 "2011-05-02T18:30:46Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Ah! Well, good. May I be assured that I have this on your authority, all doubt banished? You DO realize that you and John Mace are basically on the same side of this discussion and that he was merely amending a rather minor point you had made in the discussion, right? ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/27 "2011-05-02T18:33:15Z")
Torture is wrong, when we do it we don the black hat. But in defense of the OP there are people in the past that have tried to claim that not only is torture wrong that it also never works. I think it is clear torture often works but we need to maintain the high road and not use torture. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/28 "2011-05-02T18:35:16Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Torture is wrong, when we do it we don the black hat. But in defense of the OP there are people in the past that have tried to claim that not only is torture wrong that it also never works. > > I think it is clear torture often works but we need to maintain the high road and not use torture. No, it isn’t clear that it “often works”; quite the opposite. That’s why the professional interrogators don’t use it. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/29 "2011-05-02T18:40:42Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Eight years to set up a mission? The entire second world war took less time than that. You are truly missing the point. Do some reading. It took years of piecing together and then verifying intelligence to accomplish that list. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/30 "2011-05-02T18:46:05Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > You DO realize that you and John Mace are basically on the same side of this discussion and that he was merely amending a rather minor point you had made in the discussion, right? No, actually, I don’t. In fact, I am not at all convinced that such is the case. You are free, of course, to crush my doubt beneath the weight of rock-solid citation. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/31 "2011-05-02T18:48:32Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > No, it isn’t clear that it “often works”; quite the opposite. That’s why the professional interrogators don’t use it. Often does not mean the majority of the time. Often compared to never is all I meant. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/32 "2011-05-02T19:13:45Z")
Torture can be used to get intelligence if there is a quick coupling of gaining the intelligence and verifying the intelligence. If you’ve got a locked safe, and the guy who knows the combination, torturing him to reveal the combination is probably going to get that safe open pretty quickly. That’s because, every time he gives you a wrong combination, you go right back to torturing him. There’s a clear link there between giving correct information and the hope of avoiding future torture. But the more usual method is to just torture someone until they sign a confession, after which you can put them in front of a firing squad with a clear conscience. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/33 "2011-05-02T19:21:36Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Often does not mean the majority of the time. Often compared to never is all I meant. This is like saying a clock is still useful because it is right twice a day. Problem is you never know when the clock is right. Sure, by chance, you’ll get the right time when you look at it but most times you have no idea. Torture provides unreliable information from the person being tortured. Professional interrogators have known this for a long time and the ones who are good at interrogation simply do not torture their prisoners if they hope to gain good intelligence. Torture is pretty much the worst thing you can do to a prisoner if you want to get good intelligence. That it has worked once in awhile does not change that at all. Indeed, torture can actually be counter-productive more often than productive as it causes you to work to verify bogus information. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/34 "2011-05-02T19:24:52Z")
> [@](#): > > If this is true\*, and you are/were against waterboarding and/or “enhanced interrogation methods”, does this change your outlook? Do you still claim that it doesn’t result in any truthful intel? I’m not against ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ if they work (sleep deprivation supposedly is relatively effective), but I’d have to question an interrogation technique that takes 8 years to develop usable and actionable intelligence. There is no way Osama has been in that same location since 2003, so I’m highly skeptical that waterboarding got the intelligence needed to finally find him and take him down. From what I’ve read they have known about where they thought he was for some time now, and were merely waiting on confirming it and having a plan that didn’t involve blowing him and everyone else in the area into little tiny bits…bits that wouldn’t be very easy to confirm who was killed. Would it change my mind about waterboarding if you could prove it was effective? Maybe. It would take some significant proof, however, to convince me that it would work and be able to get accurate information out of it in a timely manner. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/35 "2011-05-02T19:28:56Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Indeed, torture can actually be counter-productive more often than productive as it causes you to work to verify bogus information. Indeed, if anything the ObL example emphasizes this point. Perhaps if we hadn’t had to filter out the useless information we recieved from torture, we might have found ObL _quicker_. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/36 "2011-05-02T20:08:04Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > You are truly missing the point. Do some reading. World War II really did take less than eight years. Apparently that wasn’t mentioned in the book you read. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/37 "2011-05-02T20:11:29Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Often does not mean the majority of the time. Often compared to never is all I meant. We’ll ignore the tortured chain of logic of that statement and simply note that forcibly coerced testimony (torture, stress positioning, sleep deprivation, and other methods to force a subject to divulge information) is widely regarded as being less reliable than non-forcible methods of information extraction such as isolation, incentive, emotional appeal/manipulation, and the Reid technique, insofar as the subject is motivated to conceal or distort information in any way to end the conditions, including false positive results (lying to satisfy the questions of the interrogators). In the law enforcement world, there are numerous studies that have demonstrated that non-forcible interrogation techniques have provided more accurate, credible, and useful testimony and confessions which have resulted in higher rates of conviction or plead-out and fewer successful false conviction appeals compared to testimony elicited by forcible techniques. (Like the Miranda warnings, such techniques were originally resisted by law enforcement as an impediment to obtaining successful conviction but are now recognized as being advantageous.) There are few people–and particularly those inclined to religious zealotry–who are effectively able to resist emotional manipulation by a skilled interrogator. The Errol Morris documentary _Standard Operating Procedure_ details of the Abu Gharib interrogation center including damning testimony from a professional interrogator (private contractor to the CIA) who made it clear that he considered most of the interrogation operations to be a sham conducted by inexperienced and untrained “interrogators”. There is little reason to believe that Gitmo was run much differently, and the if the quality of intelligence product provided by the interrogations there takes eight years to come to fruition in the form of tracking a single individual (and especially one about whom the senior executive declared in 2002 to be “…not that concerned about him,” then it is highly questionable aside from any strictly moral or ethical stance that such methods have been worth the international prestige and political costs lost over the ensuing ten years. The sad truth about such arguments for torture and other physical coercion is that aside from the questionable efficacy, the appeal for them exists due to a massive void in human intelligence (HUMINT) operations, i.e. talking to the guy on the ground. In his transparently axe-grinidng memoir, _The Mission, the Men, and Me_, former 1SOFD-D operator Pete Blaber harps repeatedly on not only the lack of development of HUMINT assets but also the institutional distrust for on-the-ground intelligence versus remote surveillance (satellite, UAV), psychological profiling, and outright PowerPoint voodoo that often passes for “intelligence”. In fact, Blaber describes how his private interview with Ali Mohamed–a supposed “double agent” who was at one time a CIA field agent, US Army Special Forces soldier, and later trained al Qaeda operatives and assisted in planning the 1998 US Embassy bombings who was virtually ignored by the US foreign and domestic intelligence agencies–voluntarily revealed information to him that was later of great value in setting the groundwork for Operation Anaconda in Shahi-Kot Valley in Afghanistan. A concerted effort to develop on the ground assets in the search for bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders–who were dismissive of and largely disliked by native Afghans, even those who supported the Taliban regime–would have been far more effective than the forcible coercion of some self-proclaimed high lieutenant in a prison thousands of miles away with months or years old intelligence to offer. At any rate, the celebration and joint-dislocating self-congratulation surrounding the death of bin Laden highlights everything that is badly wrong about this “War on Terror”. If the al Qaeda network is truly as large, effective, and professional as it is claimed to be, the death of one individual, even at the top, is of little genuine merit. The goal should be (as in all warfare) to disrupt logistical and operational chains, isolate materiel and financial resources, and eradicate the source of the conflict, i.e. militant Islam as a philosophy that people are willing to strap explosives to themselves and walk into a nightclub or crash a plane to promote and preserve. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![G-SE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f0a364/32.png) [@G-SE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G-SE)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/38 "2011-05-02T20:15:50Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Eight years to set up a mission? The entire second world war took less time than that. Did I say that? No. I said it took time for all the intel to fall in place. According to the timeline [here](http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/khalid-sheikh-muhammad-capture-osama-bin-laden-courier/story?id=13506413): 2007: We “finally” learned the name of the courier. 2009: We locate him and start tracking him. Aug 2010: We figured the courier was meeting with Bin Laden. May 2011: We kill Bin Laden. It took a couple years to identify the courier once we learned about him, and then 4 years to trace him back to Bin Laden. It’s not that hard to follow along. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/39 "2011-05-02T20:16:53Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > I’m not against ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ if they work (sleep deprivation supposedly is relatively effective), _\_ You mean something that among other things is known to cause hallucinations and general irrationality? Yeah, I’m sure you get real reliable information from someone you are in the process of driving insane. ---
**Author:** ![G-SE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f0a364/32.png) [@G-SE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G-SE)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2011, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/40 "2011-05-02T20:21:05Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > “More and more”? Saying the same thing over and over again doesn’t mean you’ve given more information than before, and an unnamed CIA official usually isn’t the best source of data when it comes to the effectiveness of waterboarding. Even the [AP](http://www.startribune.com/nation/121089124.html) is reporting it. I’m not going to link and cite every article about it, but more are surfacing. That’s why I said “more and more”. Get it? More articles. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487.md?page=3)