Much of the aftermath of the killing of Osama Bin Laden Sunday night in Pakistan has consisted of sophomoric chest-thumping proclaiming a twisted version of “justice” that Peterr very eloquently exposed here. There is another trend in the response, however, that is even more disgusting. A number of people involved in the torture program created and implemented during the George W. Bush administration are now trying to claim that Bin Laden would not have been found and killed without torture. Marcy Wheeler was out in front of those claims, debunking them before they came out and has stayed on the task with more details as the torturers continue their spin. The torturers are getting more desperate, and today we have none other than Jose Rodriguez, who ordered much of the torture as head of the CounterTerrorism Center (and then was the one who destroyed videotaped evidence of torture, only to be given a “get out of jail free” card by Barack Obama and Eric Holder), appearing in the press to justify his actions.

Torture didn’t lead us to OBL; rather, it led us to stop searching in concerted manner for OBL. Or so it seems when you really look at what Jose Rodriguez said.

They waterboarded KSM 183 times in a month, and he either never got asked about couriers guarding OBL, or he avoided answering the question honestly. Had KSM revealed that detail, Bush might have gotten OBL 8 years ago.

And just as importantly, the whole time KSM was shielding Abu Ahmed’s true identity while being waterboarded, KSM was also lying to the CIA about where OBL was.

This narrative still seems to be missing at least one step: how they learned Abu Ahmed’s real name.

The story of the frantic raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad has evolved over the past 24 hours. What was a very crisp narrative full of interesting details has not held up. Here are a few examples. . . .

Either KSM shielded the courier’s identity entirely until close to 2007, or he told his interrogators that there was a courier who might be protecting bin Laden early in his detention but they were never able to force him to give the courier’s true name or his location, at least not until three or four years after the waterboarding of KSM ended. That’s either a sign of the rank incompetence of KSM’s interrogators (that is, that they missed the significance of a courier protecting OBL), or a sign he was able to withstand whatever treatment they used with him.

As soon as we started talking about torture on the level of efficacy, i.e. whether torture “worked,” it was inevitable that we’d have a day like this.

Apparently the mission was a kill mission and no attempt was made to capture bin Laden. Now maybe a capture wouldn’t have been possible. And if there was an uproar over where to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, you can imagine what the debate over the bin Laden trial would have been like. But this tailor-made conspiracy theory would not have been generated, and what’s more the international legitimacy gained by trying an avowed mass murderer cannot be overlooked. And you wouldn’t have this weird circumstance of people like Dick Cheney congratulating the President for killing another human being.

Was Abu Faraj al-Libbi the “high value detainee” that pointed the US to OBL’s compound in Pakistan?

There was something I appreciated about the Holder press conference capitulating on trying the 9/11 defendants in civilian trials.

He didn’t try to spin it as a good idea.