OK, now I'm just confused as hell.
On the one hand, take a look at this article about an interview with Leon Panetta regarding the question of whether bin Laden intel came from torture:
Intelligence garnered from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him, CIA Chief Leon Panetta told NBC News on Tuesday.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" were used to extract information that led to the mission's success, Panetta said during an interview with anchor Brian Williams. Those techniques included waterboarding, he acknowledged.
As disturbing as this is, let's take a look at another article on the same topic, also from today, quoting Donald friggin' Rumsfeld:
“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.”
Next, take a look at the sources of both articles/interviews.
That's right. MSNBC for the Panetta interview and NewsMax--yes, I linked to NewsMax--for the Rumsfeld interview.
If anyone should be pushing the "See? Told ya so!" meme on waterboarding etc. right now it should be NewsMax and Rusmfeld.
So, to summarize--we now have the right-wing, Bush/Cheney Sec. of Defense & a GOP propaganda source denying that Osama was captured using the very methods they should normally be crowing about...while we simultaneously have the Democratic CIA director and (supposedly) left-leaning MSNBC claiming that some of the intel may have indeed come from waterboarding...which Obama/Panetta have condemned.
None of this should make sense to anyone on either side of this particular controversy--all of these sources should be pushing the opposite viewpoint that they seem to be. Weird.
Could someone alert Marcie Wheeler and see if she can help explain just what the f*ck is going on here?
Update: OK, there have been two key points made in the comments that may clear up some of this disturbing seeming contradiction:
--First, Panetta appears to be referring to the CIA only, while Rumsfeld is referring to the DoD only.
--Second, and more iffy, is the actual wording of Panetta's response. If you read his words carefully, he never comes out and actually states that the information which led to bin Laden's capture came from the torture of detainees--he says that the info came from detainees who, at some point, had indeed been tortured.
Those are NOT the same thing.
He could mean something like this:
1. Detainees are tortured under Bush/Cheney back in 2003-04 without giving up anything useful; they're then basically shoved in a cell for another 5 years.
2. After the Obama admin takes over, the detainees are actually treated with some amount of humanity and finally decide to open up a bit, figuring that it can't possibly matter after all this time, and besides, they've been stuck in a cell for 8 fucking years protecting OBL's ass. Fuck 'im.
Result: Yes, the intel did indeed come from prisoners who "had been tortured" but wasn't given because of the torture.
If that's how it played out (or something similar) then what Panetta actually said would be true--but it also means that he just fucked up on a MASSIVE level and needs to clarify what he meant IMMEDIATELY.
It's also conceivable that some of the info did indeed come from the torture--but that the prisoners would have given it up just as easily (if not even faster) if they'd been given a chance to do so. From what I've read over the years, we were basically torturing them 30 seconds after captured.
Whatever the case is, I think Panetta needs to clear this up ASAP.
FWIW, President Obama will be interviewed on 60 Minutes this Sunday. If Steve Kroft has any sense, he'll ask him to clear this up in no uncertain terms, and if President Obama has any sense, he'd better have a damned good, clear, and absolute explanation about what actually happened.
Update x2: On top of the earlier front page diaries on this issue, Andrew Sullivan has posted a roundup which includes much of the info from those diaries and more, which mostly clears things up, but which also make Panetta's responses that much more confusing.