# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/61 "2011-05-03T12:40:41Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > You are truly missing the point. Do some reading. It took years of piecing together and then verifying intelligence to accomplish that list. Uh…intelligence was pieced together in the Second World War too, you know. If it’s true that it really took 8 years to figure this out, we’re stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/62 "2011-05-03T16:53:18Z")
As is typical, this primarily-GOP led assertion is the opposite of the truth. > **[Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More](https://news.yahoo.com/)** > > The latest news and headlines from Yahoo News. Get breaking news stories and in-depth coverage with videos and photos. > [@](#): > > Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation. So, he apparently **withheld** the information while being waterboarded, and revealed it later, under standard interrogation techniques. See also, again, Steve Benen: [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011\_05/029251.php](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_05/029251.php) Really, at a meta-level, I continue to wonder why anyone would believe people who routinely tell them things that are just not true. Is there no end to the gullibility of people who pay attention to the right wing? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/63 "2011-05-03T16:57:46Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > So, he apparently **withheld** the information while being waterboarded, and revealed it later, under standard interrogation techniques. But the waterboarding softened him up, right? ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/64 "2011-05-03T17:15:05Z")
So I guess we are now discussing the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in general . . . I love how some people on a messageboard decide they are experts on something simply because they’ve read some news articles about it. My position is that first the politicians decide whether enhanced interrogation techniques can be used or not, and then the interrogators get to decide which techniques to use in a specific situation with a specific detainee. My opinion about what works and what doesn’t based on reading news articles is completely meaningless. My view on what is “moral” or “immoral” (if I were to even use those words) is also completely meaningless. In this specific case, even if KSM didn’t reveal any useful info while being waterboarded, that doesn’t mean that waterboarding was not useful in the overall program of obtaining information from KSM. None of us are qualified to decide that question–any of our opinions on that would be about as useful as my dog’s opinion about which movie to watch. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/65 "2011-05-03T17:20:56Z")
There is a speculative explanation for the time lag, by a happy coincidence, it fits my preferred narrative: KSM didn’t know the info was important, nor did his interrogators. Or, perhaps more likely, at the time the courier wasn’t _the_ courier, just one of many. Just another name amongst many, many names and most of them fake, _nom de guerre_, as it were. KSM was the mastermind of 9/11? Then KSM was the mastermind of a plot that shouldn’t have worked, it was insanely complicated and predicated on stupid assumptions, first and foremost, that the cockpit doors were not locked. They weren’t, and I have never understood why they weren’t, seeing as we have a history of airplane hijackings going back fifty years. And sending suspicious characters to obtain flight training that excluded take-off and landing? You gotta be kidding me. Tom Clancy would never have touched this plot for a story line, its too stupid, nobody would have believed it. Another point, oft repeated. It is standard practice for clandestine terrorist organizations, going back at least as far as Lenin’s revolutionary bolshevik cadres: if you don’t know where one of your people are, he is captured. You assume he has been, or is being, tortured. You assume that he will give up whatever information he has. You assume that anything he knows, the enemy knows. All the codes, all the safe houses, everything he knew, the other guy now knows. In clandestine revolutionary and/or terrorist organizations, paranoia isn’t a defect, it is a survival skill.\* Information obtained by torture is only useful if it is actionable, if something can be done with it. If KSM gave away a safe house, that house is almost certainly not going to be used, other than possibly bait for a trap. What this suggests to me is contrary to our notion of AlQ being a bunch of cunning runts, actually, they were unsophisticated religious fanatics with no clue as to what they were about. To wildly oversimplify, if Lenin were running AlQ, Osama would still be alive. \*Addenduh: which is why in a properly run cadre, nobody knows anymore than he absolutely must know to perform his assigned function. Where do you think the phrase “need to know” comes from? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/66 "2011-05-03T17:22:14Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > So I guess we are now discussing the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in general . . . > > I love how some people on a messageboard decide they are experts on something simply because they’ve read some news articles about it. > > My position is that first the politicians decide whether enhanced interrogation techniques can be used or not, and then the interrogators get to decide which techniques to use in a specific situation with a specific detainee. My opinion about what works and what doesn’t based on reading news articles is completely meaningless. My view on what is “moral” or “immoral” (if I were to even use those words) is also completely meaningless. > > In this specific case, even if KSM didn’t reveal any useful info while being waterboarded, that doesn’t mean that waterboarding was not useful in the overall program of obtaining information from KSM. None of us are qualified to decide that question–any of our opinions on that would be about as useful as my dog’s opinion about which movie to watch. Some people base their opinions on facts and the opinions of experts. Torture is considered by experts to be unreliable. The guys who decided to use torture in the last administration weren’t expert interrogators, they were outside contractors with no experience. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/67 "2011-05-03T17:22:45Z")
[http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/05/obama-advisor-waterboarding-didnt-lead-to-bin-laden-kill/](http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/05/obama-advisor-waterboarding-didnt-lead-to-bin-laden-kill/) According to some insiders , it was not due to waterboarding at all. When you are tortured, you will say anything to make it stop. How do you tell if it has value? You are not connecting the dots, merely making more and more dots. But we do desperately want to justify waterboarding, because it diminishes us . So if we can pretend it works, it may not be so bad. It is. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/68 "2011-05-03T17:35:46Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > Some people base their opinions on facts and the opinions of experts. Torture is considered by experts to be unreliable. The guys who decided to use torture in the last administration weren’t expert interrogators, they were outside contractors with no experience. Really? **ALL** experts consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable? Or is it just that the experts you listen to (i.e., the ones who consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable) consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable? And you have no agenda for choosing which experts to listen to, do you? You just somehow became interested in the topic of interrogation, and made a complete and unbiased survey of the subject, and found some opinions from completely unbiased experts, and that’s the conclusion every single one of them came to, right? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/69 "2011-05-03T17:54:20Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Really? **ALL** experts consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable? Or is it just that the experts you listen to (i.e., the ones who consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable) consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable? > > And you have no agenda for choosing which experts to listen to, do you? You just somehow became interested in the topic of interrogation, and made a complete and unbiased survey of the subject, and found some opinions from completely unbiased experts, and that’s the conclusion every single one of them came to, right? No. I looked at the issue when it came to the forefront because Bush decided to flush two centuries of America as the good-guy down the toilet. The experts I listen to, are actually experts. Not some bloated shitbag on FOX that struts about strength or Neocon chicken-hawks who want every American gesture to be made with a fist. People who actually interrogate people for intelligence community don’t think that torture is reliable. Care to cite actual working interrogators in the intelligence field who do think it’s reliable? ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/70 "2011-05-03T18:08:03Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > No. I looked at the issue when it came to the forefront because Bush decided to flush two centuries of America as the good-guy down the toilet. Right. Like I said, you aren’t some guy who became interested in enhanced interrogation techniques and then performed an unbiased survey of expert opinion. You became interested in it only when a President you don’t like started talking about using them. > [@](#): > > The experts I listen to, are actually experts. Meaning that they agree with your position. > [@](#): > > Not some bloated shitbag on FOX that struts about strength or Neocon chicken-hawks who want every American gesture to be made with a fist. Not sure how this part is relevant. > [@](#): > > People who actually interrogate people for intelligence community don’t think that torture is reliable. Care to cite actual working interrogators in the intelligence field who do think it’s reliable? No thanks. You aren’t interested in facts–you know the truth, facts would just get in your way. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/71 "2011-05-03T18:14:41Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Right. Like I said, you aren’t some guy who became interested in enhanced interrogation techniques and then performed an unbiased survey of expert opinion. You became interested in it only when a President you don’t like started talking about using them. No, I because interested when a president started torturing people. If Clinton or Obama started torturing people I’d have cared too. As opposed to you, who can see no wrong as long as an issue can possibly be considered right-wing. > [@](#): > > Meaning that they agree with your position. Not sure how this part is relevant. My position is based on what the consensus of the working professionals is. I would oppose torture on ethical grounds even if it did work, as it happens it provides untrustworthy information too. It’s un-American and it doesn’t work. Which I suppose puts it right along side most of your policy preferences. 😃 > [@](#): > > No thanks. You aren’t interested in facts–you know the truth, facts would just get in your way. I’m \*only \*interested in facts. That’s why I asked you for some. I will note that instead of providing them you back-peddle and run away. ---
**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 3, 2011, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/72 "2011-05-03T18:15:38Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Right. Like I said, you aren’t some guy who became interested in enhanced interrogation techniques and then performed an unbiased survey of expert opinion. You became interested in it only when a President you don’t like started talking about using them. > > Meaning that they agree with your position. Not sure how this part is relevant. > No thanks. You aren’t interested in facts–you know the truth, facts would just get in your way. Why the hell do you bother asking questions if you are just going to toss the answers out the window and make up your own? ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/73 "2011-05-03T18:31:47Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > No, I because interested when a president started torturing people. So you were alive during the [McKinley administration](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_kramer)? Wow, you’re old. > [@](#): > > As opposed to you, who can see no wrong as long as an issue can possibly be considered right-wing. You’re in the wrong forum for that, bub. > [@](#): > > My position is based on what the consensus of the working professionals is. OK. Please provide a cite to this consensus of working professionals. Thank you. > [@](#): > > Which I suppose puts it right along side most of your policy preferences. 😃 Again, wrong forum, bub. > [@](#): > > I’m \*only \*interested in facts. That’s why I asked you for some. I will note that instead of providing them you back-peddle and run away. You say you base your opinion on some consensus–so let’s see it. Put up or shut up. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/74 "2011-05-03T18:44:46Z")
Not but minutes ago, you were asked for a cite and refused, based on your contempt for his capacity to process facts. I only mention this because it is entirely possible that you don’t realize the stunning hypocrisy of that sequence. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/75 "2011-05-03T18:47:08Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Not but minutes ago, you were asked for a cite and refused, based on your contempt for his capacity to process facts. I only mention this because it is entirely possible that you don’t realize the stunning hypocrisy of that sequence. He says he has a belief based on the consensus of working interrogators. It’s up to him to provide a cite for that consensus (or not and show that he’s full of shit). I haven’t made a single claim that imposes any burden on my to produce a cite. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/76 "2011-05-03T18:49:19Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > OK. Please provide a cite to this consensus of working professionals. Thank you. Here is a list of cites: [Top Interrogation Experts Agree: Torture Doesn't Work → Washingtons Blog](http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/04/top-interrogation-experts-say-torture.html) Note that these include the Army Field Manual, the FBI, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, the CIA Inspector General, various other military interrogators and FBI and CIA sources. Now, will you please cite your experts that claim that torture produces reliable and useful intelligence? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/77 "2011-05-03T18:50:30Z")
And this just in: **Senate Intelligence Chair: Information that Led To Bin Laden’s Killing Did Not Come from Torture** (Center-lefty site, contamination protocols should be observed…) [http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/03/feinstein-intel-torture-bin-laden/](http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/03/feinstein-intel-torture-bin-laden/) There’s mine. Where’s yours? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/78 "2011-05-03T18:51:16Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > So you were alive during the [McKinley administration](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_kramer)? Did you even read your link? > [@](#): > > Wow, you’re old.You’re in the wrong forum for that, bub. I didn’t see that as over the line. > [@](#): > > OK. Please provide a cite to this consensus of working professionals. Thank you.Again, wrong forum, bub. How about: [Does torture work? | Science | The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/nov/04/2) How about: [FM 34-52 Chapter 1](http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/policy/army/fm/fm34-52/chapter1.htm) > [@The Socialists at the Army](#): > > Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. However, the use of force is not to be confused with psychological ploys, verbal trickery, or other nonviolent and noncoercive ruses used by the interrogator in questioning hesitant or uncooperative sources. Or does the Army not count because it goes against your unexamined gut-instinct? > [@](#): > > You say you base your opinion on some consensus–so let’s see it. Put up or shut up. See above. ---
**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 3, 2011, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/79 "2011-05-03T19:02:21Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Really? **ALL** experts consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable? Or is it just that the experts you listen to (i.e., the ones who consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable) consider enhanced interrogation techniques to be unreliable? > > And you have no agenda for choosing which experts to listen to, do you? You just somehow became interested in the topic of interrogation, and made a complete and unbiased survey of the subject, and found some opinions from completely unbiased experts, and that’s the conclusion every single one of them came to, right? Or maybe we have [gone through this extensively already](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=515154) on this message board and provided extensive citations. But hey…while I await your citations for these other experts who think torture works as a good means of gaining valuable information I’ll leave you with the CIA’s take on it. Hopefully you’ll count them as an expert cite: > [@](#): > > Levels of pressure introduced by coercive methods, as with torture in general, are often in the eye of the beholder as illustrated in the following passage from Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, an account of Operation Phoenix, conducted during the Vietnam War: > > Some people define torture as the infliction of _severe_ physical pain on a defenseless person. I define torture as the infliction of _any_ pain on a defenseless individual because deciding which activities inflict severe pain is an excessively complicated and imprecise business. > (Original italics)99 > > The KUBARK manual offers unique and exceptional insights into the complex challenges of educing information from a resistant source through noncoercive means. While it addresses the use of coercive methods, it also describes how those methods may prove ultimately counterproductive. Although criticized for its discussion of coercion, the KUBARK manual does not portray coercive methods as a necessary — or even viable — means of effectively educing information. > > SOURCE: [Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art](http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf) P133 (PDF…big one) ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487/80 "2011-05-03T19:07:33Z")
I’ll look at those cites later when I get a chance. I have no doubt that none of them say anything about a consensus of working interrogators, and the consensus exists in your mind only. Also, for all of you insisting that I provide a cite that enhanced interrogation techniques are effective, I’ll remind you that I never said that I believe they are effective. Here’s my position (as I stated upthread): > [@](#): > > My position is that first the politicians decide whether enhanced interrogation techniques can be used or not, and then the interrogators get to decide which techniques to use in a specific situation with a specific detainee. My opinion about what works and what doesn’t based on reading news articles is completely meaningless. My view on what is “moral” or “immoral” (if I were to even use those words) is also completely meaningless. I know it’s hard for some of you to grasp nuances of issues beyond “torture bad!” but please do try. Just because I disagree that “torture bad!” doesn’t mean I believe it’s effective. My only view is that it doesn’t matter what my view is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-waterboarding-help-kill-bin-laden/580487.md?page=5)