Waterboarding helped us track down bin Laden?

Big Peace says, George W. Bush Vindicated.

...Therefore, the point that needs to be made is that George W. Bush deserves our gratitude for refusing to back down when the war was unpopular. He merits all the honor we can bestow upon him for not giving in when he was called every name in the book and openly slandered by MSM personalities. He is to be commended for standing with our troops when Democrats (like Obama) threatened to cut their funding, and for staying out of the limelight when our troops achieved great things (like capturing Saddam Hussein), because he wanted the troops to have the honor. (Obama, on the other hand, can’t wait to tell us what he authorized, decided, etc.)...

And: Bush Made Mistakes, Squeezing Terrorists Hard Wasn’t One of Them

At the Weekly Standard, THOMAS JOSCELYN asks Did Enhanced Interrogation of the 20th Hijacker Help Identify Bin Laden’s Courier?

Press reports say that KSM and Abu Faraj al Libbi gave up information on the courier, including his nom de guerre. In addition, other reports say that “detainees” at Gitmo gave up information on the courier. And now there are at least two accounts fingering Qahtani as the Gitmo detainee who told authorities about the courier. It is possible that all versions of the story are true, with multiple detainees giving up information on the courier. We’ll have to wait and see.

Either way, this is sure to “rekindle” (as the title of Isikoff’s piece says) the debate over interrogations. KSM and al Libbi were initially held in CIA black sites and subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques before being transferred to Gitmo. Qahtani was subjected to a specially-approved interrogation regime at Gitmo – one of the few ever implemented there – after the FBI repeatedly failed to get any information out of him.

B. Daniel Blatt collects together links indicating that "enhanced techniques" appear to have helped us track down bin Laden. GayPatriot » So, it seems waterboarding helped us track down bin Laden

(Links at original post)

Leon Panetta has always conducted himself with dignity on the public stage.

In this video, he indicates that our intelligence officials gained some information that would later help us track down the hide-out of the Al-Qaeda leader through, um, well, “enhanced interrogation techniques“.

When asked, Doug Powers reports, “whether or not advanced interrogation techniques helped get Bin Laden,” Attorney General Eric Holder “said he didn’t know.” You’d think an official of an administration which has been most critical* of such polices would have given an unequivocal response (in the negative) if they hadn’t helped.

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RELATED: Ed Driscoll alerts us to this observation in Investor’s Business Daily, “If President Bush had not invaded Iraq, President Obama likely would not have found Osama bin Laden. The al-Qaida operative who fingered bin Laden’s courier was caught in Iraq helping terrorists in 2004″. Ed’s initial roundup on the death of Mr. Bin Laden also has a plethora of pithy points and interesting links.

ALSO RELATED AND WELL WORTH YOUR TIME: Michael Barone contends that to get bin Laden, Obama relied on policies he decried.

*UPDATE: Peter Wehner reports: “After all, Barack Obama was a fierce critic of EITs [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques] during and after the 2008 campaign.“

Michelle Malkin notes that Obama also campaigned against secret prisons, and was perfectly happy to continue using them. Then and now: The Left, Obama and secret prisons

Last night, I noted that “much of the intelligence gathered that led to discovering bin Laden was developed by the detainees detained under the Bush administration at facilities like the one Obama wanted to shut down.”

Those facilities, US officials are now reporting, included the CIA secret prisons reviled by the Left, outed by the Washington Post, and condemned by…wait for it…President Obama.