Proof that enhanced interrogations worked

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

The Washington Post has published a piece about the specifics of Abu Zubaida's interrogation. This was one of the first instances where enhanced interrogation techniques were used. This is also the guy who gave up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Jose Padilla. The Washington Post and pretty much every other major outlet has consistently trumpeted the idea that these techniques yielded nothing. This report contradicts that quite solidly.

"In two different bits, after sleep deprivation, is when Abu Zubaida gave clues about who Padilla might be," the former U.S. official said. "When that was put together with other CIA sources, they were able to identify who he was. . . . The cables will not show that the FBI just asked friendly questions and got information about Padilla."

Hmmm, you mean that being mean turned out to be effective? One of the main contractors responsible for the questioning said.

"The thing that will make him talk," the participant recalled Mitchell saying, "is fear."

You mean like this.

Abu Zubaida told the Red Cross that a black cloth was placed over his face and that interrogators used a plastic bottle to pour water on the fabric, creating the sensation that he was drowning.

The former U.S. official said that waterboarding forced Abu Zubaida to reveal information that led to the Sept. 11, 2002, capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, the key liaison between the Hamburg cell led by Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and al-Qaeda's leadership in Afghanistan.

Keep this in mind the next time someone trots out the lie that these were not effective. They helped us learn more about AQ than all the useless electronic spying of the previous 20 years. And once we got our hands on KSM they gave us a wealth of info about them.

At his bedside, Gaudin asked Soufan to show Abu Zubaida a photograph of Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, an Egyptian suspect in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. The two agents had photos of terrorism suspects on a handheld computer, and Gaudin accidentally displayed the wrong photo.

Abu Zubaida said: "This is Mukhtar. This is the mastermind of 9/11."

The agents did not know that Mukhtar, a name that had surfaced in some raw intelligence and an Osama bin Laden video, was a nickname for Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Nor did they know that Mohammed was an al-Qaeda member.

This was before they started roughing him up, but once KSM was scarfed up, he got some of this treatment as they knew it had worked with Zubaida. No one says it was pretty, or less than brutally ugly, but it was effective and it needed to be done.

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Proof that enhanced interrogations worked

The Washington Post has published a piece about the specifics of Abu Zubaida's interrogation. This was one of the first instances where enhanced interrogation techniques were used. This is also the guy who gave up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Jose Padilla. The Washington Post and pretty much every other major outlet has consistently trumpeted the idea that these techniques yielded nothing. This report contradicts that quite solidly.

"In two different bits, after sleep deprivation, is when Abu Zubaida gave clues about who Padilla might be," the former U.S. official said. "When that was put together with other CIA sources, they were able to identify who he was. . . . The cables will not show that the FBI just asked friendly questions and got information about Padilla."

Hmmm, you mean that being mean turned out to be effective? One of the main contractors responsible for the questioning said.

"The thing that will make him talk," the participant recalled Mitchell saying, "is fear."

You mean like this.

Abu Zubaida told the Red Cross that a black cloth was placed over his face and that interrogators used a plastic bottle to pour water on the fabric, creating the sensation that he was drowning.

The former U.S. official said that waterboarding forced Abu Zubaida to reveal information that led to the Sept. 11, 2002, capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, the key liaison between the Hamburg cell led by Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and al-Qaeda's leadership in Afghanistan.

Keep this in mind the next time someone trots out the lie that these were not effective. They helped us learn more about AQ than all the useless electronic spying of the previous 20 years. And once we got our hands on KSM they gave us a wealth of info about them.

At his bedside, Gaudin asked Soufan to show Abu Zubaida a photograph of Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, an Egyptian suspect in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. The two agents had photos of terrorism suspects on a handheld computer, and Gaudin accidentally displayed the wrong photo.

Abu Zubaida said: "This is Mukhtar. This is the mastermind of 9/11."

The agents did not know that Mukhtar, a name that had surfaced in some raw intelligence and an Osama bin Laden video, was a nickname for Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Nor did they know that Mohammed was an al-Qaeda member.

This was before they started roughing him up, but once KSM was scarfed up, he got some of this treatment as they knew it had worked with Zubaida. No one says it was pretty, or less than brutally ugly, but it was effective and it needed to be done.

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