CIA Director Leon Panetta confirms that waterboarding / enhanced interrogation techniques led to Osama Bin Laden, in this MSNBC interview by Brian Williams.
Excerpt:
Brian Williams: I’d like to ask you about the sourcing on the intel that ultimately led to this successful attack. Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after Bin Laden?
Leon Panetta: You know, Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information, and that was true here. We had a multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation. Clearly, some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees, but we also had information from other sources as well. So it’s a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got.
Williams: Turned around the other way, are you denying that waterboarding was in part among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?
Panetta: No, I think some of the detainees clearly were — you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I’m also saying that the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.
Williams: So, final point, one final time: enhanced interrogation techniques, which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years, that includes waterboarding.
Panetta: That’s correct.
This is the waterboarding that Obama opposed. Obama opposed enhanced interrogations. Obama opposed military tribunals. Obama opposed CIA prisons. Obama opposed Guantanamo Bay. Obama opposes counter-terrorism in general.
And don’t forget how waterboarding prevented a similar 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.
Excerpt:
The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) — including the use of waterboarding — caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.
Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”
According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack — which KSM called the “Second Wave”– planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”
KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.
After KSM was captured by the United States, he was not initially cooperative with CIA interrogators. Nor was another top al Qaeda leader named Zubaydah. KSM, Zubaydah, and a third terrorist named Nashiri were the only three persons ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.
Waterboarding works. It is not torture. We waterboard all our our naval aviators as part of their SERE training.
But do you know what is torture? Partial-birth abortion. We don’t partial-birth abort our naval aviators as part of their SERE training – yet the same people who oppose waterboarding support partial-birth abortion.
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WINTERY KNIGHT 
I love your conclusion!
“Waterboarding works. It is not torture. We waterboard all our our naval aviators as part of their SERE training.
But do you know what is torture? Partial-birth abortion. We don’t partial-birth abort our naval aviators as part of their SERE training – yet the same people who oppose waterboarding support partial-birth abortion.”
Nice expose of Liberal inconsistencies!
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Excellent post. I have no problem with water boarding when we KNOW that someone has knowledge that would save lives. In our PERSONAL conduct, certainly we must reflect Christ, but when it is a nation or government, I think that it is equally a moral imperative to do whatever we can to protect the lives of potential victims.
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The question is still, “What constitutes ‘torture’?” Many things are regarded as torturous, but mostly as a matter of hyperbole. But I would have to say that anything that is inflicted upon a person against that person’s will could legitimately be counted as torture, if what is inflicted is believed by the person to be unbearable. Those servicemen who are waterboarded as part of their training do not bear it for long. At least they are not made to bear it for long.
With all this in mind, I can legitimately label waterboarding as torture. But I don’t believe it is torture that rises to a level as something like cutting off digits until information is provided, or burning with cigarettes, or some other horrible acts that despots have inflicted upon helpless people.
But what is important, for the sake and safety of our country, even if we swore off waterboarding, we should never publicize that we have. A great weapon against evil people is to allow them to believe we are capable of greater evil than they are. Nagasaki proved we were capable of incredible destruction and it served us well.
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