Gord's Notebook : GOP Wrong : In Fact Torture Slowed Down USA Efforts To Find Osama

UPDATE: 3:35 PM & & 7:57 PM , May 6, 2011.

Photo From article "The Green Light " by Philippe Sands , Vanity Fair, May 2008

"...Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to "protect" us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from "another 9/11," torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House's illegality"."

From:

"The Bush White House's Appalling and Evil Legacy: Now We Know the Whole Story" By Frank Rich, The New York Times. April 27, 2009

and also see: "Olbermann Waterboarding Sean Hannity & Torturing Suspected Witches or Detainees To Get False Confessions " at Gords Poetry Factory, April 29, 2009

and for more :
" Blast From The Past 5 Years later: " IRAQ BUSH & THE SURREAL WORLD OF POLITICS & WAR & THE ATTACK OF THE KILLER KLOWNS :NOTE FIRST PUBLISHED 2005- 5years ago on March 31at Gord's Poetry Factory"; reposted March 12, 2010

"Tuneful Tuesday: Tangled Up In Yoo & War Crimes From Afterdowningstreet.org" (AKA War Is A Crime.org) "at Gord's Poetry factory, March 02, 2010

and more links to earlier related posts at the end of this post-
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Former interrogator Mathew Alexander argues that the use of torture by the Bush administration in fact hampered intelligence gathering from POWS/ "Detainees".
Once those captured knew about torture they became unwilling to share any real actionable intel. And even a number of people either Iraqis, or Afghans, Taliban etc. who wanted to give intel to Americans were just as often incarcerated and treated as the enemy.

What works best as we have been told over and over again is to have interrogators develop a rapport over a day or two and let the prisoner over time give out information once they know they are not just going to be tossed in a Hell Hole such as Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or Bahgram etc.where they would be abused sodomized beaten humiliated and treated in the same way that Saddam treated his prisoners.

The GOP of course is appealing to its base on a gut level of an eye for an eye and the sweet taste of revenge and payback. This is why a large portion of American citizens are not bothered or ashamed of the Bush Regime's insistence that all detainees be treated as the worst of the worst and as not quite human.

The GOP also is not going to admit that Bush and Cheney were wrong in using abusive interrogation tactics besides they would then question the morality and legality of torture.

"Despite GOP Claims, Immoral Torture Slowed Down Effort to Find Bin Laden " Amy Goodman and Mathew Alexander Democracy Now! via Alternet.org, May 4, 2011

"I'm convinced we would have found bin Laden a lot earlier had we not resorted to torture and abuse," says a former senior military interrogator in Iraq.

The death of Osama bin Laden has sparked a debate over whether torture of suspects held at places such as the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay helped track down and kill the al-Qaeda leader. Some claim the mission vindicated controversial Bush policies on harsh interrogation techniques. We speak with Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator in Iraq. "The laying of the groundwork, if you will, of these [Bush-era] techniques, I believe wholeheartedly, slowed us down on the road towards Osama bin Laden and numerous other members of al-Qaeda," Alexander says. "I’m convinced we would have found him a lot earlier had we not resorted to torture and abuse."

The Pathetic Ways Conservatives Are Trying to Spin Bin Laden Killing Against Obama by Steve M. at Alternet.org, may 4, 2011

Was it ever possible that the killing of Osama bin Laden would unite America the way America was united (at least in many people's memories) immediately after 9/11?

No, it was never possible. Republicans are responding to this the way they respond to everything: by seeking to divide America and undermine Democrats and liberals. They do this for the same reason the scorpion stings the frog in the fable: it's their nature. They will continue trying to divide America until we wake up and realize that they hate America -- or at least they hate any America in which we don't turn over all the power to them. They'll undermine and weaken that pluralistic America until we finally recognize their disloyalty and marginalize the dividers.

We should have expected them to try to deny Barack Obama credit for the fact that bin Laden was located and killed on his watch, and to try to shift the credit to George W. Bush. We should have expected them to use the incident to reopen the debate about torture.

But there's more. Fox Nation, right-wing bloggers, and others are currently braying about this story from Britain's Daily Mail:

Obama took SIXTEEN HOURS to make up his mind about Bin Laden mission

Barack Obama kept military commanders hanging by declaring he would 'sleep on it' before taking 16 hours to give the go-ahead to raid Bin Laden's compound....

Really? The mission was successful, and this is the straw they grasp at? A delay of less than a day?

Let me put that in context. It took 1,306 DAYS for George W. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld for his sheer inability (or willful refusal) to cope with the chaos of Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, and for his stubborn insistence on a level of troop strength inadequate to quell the chaos and restore order -- that's 1,306 DAYS from the first reports of looting in Iraq (April 12, 2003) through the worst of the insurgency and to the day (November 8, 2006) Rumsfeld stepped down.

(Or perhaps, like Maureen Dowd, you'd like to count it down from Tora Bora: "A pigheaded Donald Rumsfeld, overly obsessed with a light footprint, didn't have the forces needed at Tora Bora to capture Osama after the invasion of Afghanistan." In that case, it's 1,787 DAYS from the conclusion of the Battle of Tora Bora, on December 17, 2001, to Rumsfeld's resignation.)

So who's the real hesitator?

.... Bloggers, led (as Little Green Footballs notes) by the grotesque Pam Geller, are advancing anonymously sourced reports from shady rumor-purveyors that the bin Laden mission happened over Obama's objections, in a "military coup" of sorts, and took place only because CIA director Leon Panetta gave the OK without waiting for Obama's approval.

Maybe this scurrilous nonsense is coming from people at the far margins of the right. Or maybe it's not -- maybe it's being injected into the debate by people close to the centers of mainstream Republican power, because they can't bear to have a country that's not divided, with powerful Democrats widely despised and mistrusted. In any event, the nonsense is being regurgitated at such sites as CNN contributor Erick Erickson's RedState and the well-connected Pajamas Media. It's part of the mainstream of Republican commentary. It's a disgrace from a disgraceful party.
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Alternet.org
" Watching Americans Celebrate the Death of Someone Is Peculiar, Even If It's Osama bin Laden " By Sheila Johnson Via Alternet.org, May 4, 2011
On Sunday evening of May Day, 2011, I came home from an early dinner with friends at around 8:30 California time and turned on the TV. And there it was -- the news that Osama bin Laden was dead, killed by us in a compound described as being “probably” located in Pakistan.

I waited to hear President Obama’s measured announcement, fortunately free of gloating although not of self-righteousness. Had he been in a biblical frame of mind, he might have intoned “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” for that was certainly what it amounted to.

Pakistani Military Faces Scrutiny as Unfolding Evidence Suggests Direct Role in Harboring bin Laden by Amy Goodman Democracy Now
Numerous questions have been raised on how Osama bin Laden could have been living in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad just down the street from Pakistan's premier military academy. CIA Director Leon Panetta has reportedly said Pakistan was either "knowledgeable or incompetent" when it came to bin Laden's whereabouts. Some evidence has emerged to indicate that the Pakistani military may have had a direct role in harboring bin Laden. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government is claiming it warned U.S. intelligence two years ago about the compound where bin Laden was killed. We go to Pakistan to speak with Graeme Smith, an award-winning foreign correspondent for _The Globe and Mail_ newspaper in Canada. He was in Abbottabad yesterday investigating the mystery behind the bin Laden compound.

Death of Bin Laden and racism

Post-bin Laden Racism: Teacher Tells 9th Grade Muslim Girl, 'I Bet You're Grieving' by Julianne Escobedo Sheperd Via Alternet.org, May 4, 2011

While new news on Osama bin Laden's killing seems to emerge hourly, one aspect of the aftermath has been reported sparingly: the related vitriolic racism that not only gets directed towards Muslims, but to Middle Easterners, South Asians, and various other racial, ethnic and religious groups that are ignorantly perceived to be 'other.' And while there are certainly other accounts of racism flaming up since bin Laden's killing on Sunday, this story is probably the most egregious, disgusting and hateful we've heard thus far

A Texas high school teacher has been placed on administrative leave following an incident where he allegedly told a 9th grade Muslim girl in his algebra class "I bet that you're grieving" on Monday following the death of Osama bin Laden.

According to one parent at Clear Brook High School in Houston who spoke about the incident to a local ABC affiliate, the teacher also said, "I heard about your uncle's death."

The parent said the student "understood that he was referring about Osama bin Laden being killed and was racially profiling her."

When the girl began crying, the teacher asked why. When another student told the teacher it was because of what he said, he apparently 'smirked and giggled' before walking away.