Jack Kelly Sunday

Jack fumbles on torture.

In this week's column in the Post-Gazette, columnist Jack Kelly parrots the hardly surprising hard-right meme that whatever President Obama did, he did it wrong.

In this case he's talking about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Our friend Jack took issue with the sometimes contradictory reports of bin Laden's death:

John Brennan, the president's counterterrorism adviser, told reporters Monday that bin Laden, gun in hand, was killed while trying to use his wife as a human shield. On Tuesday, the White House backtracked. Bin Laden wasn't armed. He didn't try to use his wife as a human shield.

Mr. Brennan may merely have been confused about the details. But shouldn't the counterterrorism adviser know such details before talking to reporters?

On this he is, perhaps, correct, though Jack Kelly complaining about other people getting details wrong is an odd thought to ponder.

Isn't it?

But let's get right to the important lie of today's column:

Vital clues to bin Laden's whereabouts came from al-Qaida bigwigs interrogated in secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay. Two apparently didn't divulge their secrets until they were waterboarded.

Waterboarding is torture, Candidate Obama said. He promised to close Gitmo, but it's still open.

If we didn't know the truth, what can we surmise that Jack's saying here?

• Some al-Qaida big wigs were waterboarded
• They gave up the vital clues to bin Laden's whereabouts in direct response to that waterboarding,

The implication, of course, is that since the waterboarding led directly to the killing bin Laden, Obama was wrong to denounce it. And that we should all siddown and STFU about it.

That's the argument, but is it valid? While the first above bullet is certainly true, the second is not so true.

Let's see if we can inject some facts into this discussion.

Dan Froomkin is a good place to start:

Chronological details of the hunt for bin Laden remain murky, but piecing together various statements from administration and intelligence officials, it appears the first step may have been the CIA learning the nickname of an al Qaeda courier -- Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti -- from several detainees picked up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Then, in 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the 9/11 mastermind, was captured, beaten, slammed into walls, shackled in stress positions and made to feel like he was drowning 183 times in a month. When asked about al-Kuwaiti, however, KSM denied that the he had anything to do with al Qaeda.

In 2004, officials detained a man named Hassan Ghul and brought him to one of the CIA’s black sites, where he identified al-Kuwaiti as a key courier.

A third detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, was arrested in 2005 and under CIA interrogation apparently denied knowing al-Kuwaiti at all.

Once the courier's real name was established -- about four years ago, and by other means -- intelligence analysts stayed on the lookout for him. After he was picked up on a monitored phone call last year, he ultimately led authorities to bin Laden.

The link between the Bush-era interrogation regime and bin Laden’s killing, then, appears tenuous -- especially since two of the three detainees in question apparently provided deceptive information about the courier even after being interrogated under durress.

So it didn't work. And even if it did, even if a tidbit or two (or twelve) of actionable intelligence were to be squeezed out of a prisoner, it's still illegal.

From the Convention against Torture (made into US Law in 1996):

Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

And:

Article 2

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Still, it didn't work. And repeating the lie a thousand times won't change that.

Let me push back a little (or at least try to):

• Torture doesn't work.
• Torture is illegal.

When Scaife News Sources Collide

First there's the Scaife-Funded Heritage Foundation on the "connection" between the killing of Osama bin Laden and the "enhanced interrogations" of the Bush Administration:

A senior official who briefed the press early this morning explained that “detainees in the post-9/11 period flagged for us individuals who may have been providing direct support to bin Laden and his deputy, [Ayman al-] Zawahiri, after their escape from Afghanistan.”

He continued: “One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre, or his nickname, and identified him as both a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11, and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the former number three of al-Qaeda who was captured in 2005.” The United States obtained this information four years ago, the official stated.

One more crucial fact: According to the “detainees” (note the plural), this individual was “one of the few al-Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden.”

Think about that: This lead was developed during the Bush Administration, most likely from al-Qaeda associates picked up and transferred to Guantanamo and subject to interrogations that critics have repeatedly deemed to be pointless in terms of intelligence value. Whether these detainees remain at Guantanamo is an open question.

And then, a paragraph later:

For years, we have heard that strategic interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo was worthless, that the information is (at best) stale and almost certainly of dubious reliability. The most strident call such interrogations illegal.

So, yes. Torture led to the intel that led to the bullets that killed Osama bin Laden.

Then there's Salena Zito, columnist at the Scaife-owned Tribune-Review:

Commandos killed bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that began with the intelligence community identifying his courier last year and tracking his movements in the months leading up to Sunday.

In the past decade, critics assailed the CIA for not connecting the dots before the 9/11 terror attacks, for failing to capture bin Laden and for using enhanced interrogation techniques.

Remember, the "enhanced interrogation" was water boarding. Though Zito is unsure what connection there is between Abbottabad and waterboarding:

It is unclear whether interrogations played a role in identifying the bin Laden courier whose trail led to the terror leader's door.

Then there's the Scaife-owned Newsmax, interviewing none other than Don Rumsfeld himself:

Asked if harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay played a role in obtaining intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, Rumsfeld declares: “First of all, no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. That’s a myth that’s been perpetrated around the country by critics.

“The United States Department of Defense did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”

So which is it? Waterboarding led to Abbottabad or didn't it? They really should get their stories straight.

Waterboarding's still illegal, though.