Gee, those who were actually involved in the investigation said that no, 'enhanced interrogation' was NOT an effective factor in finding bin Laden.
Guy, there was a time when America's very future was in doubt. Troops went to the man in charge because they wanted to torture the 'truth' out of their prisoners in order to not lose the war.
Here was their commander's reply:
“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.”
You may have heard of that commander - his name was George Washington, and yes, America's future was still very much in doubt, in infinitely greater danger of defeat than anything Osama bin Laden could have dreamed. And yet he still forbade torture.
Back in the mid 2000's,
two dozen men who were tasked with interrogating German prisoners of war came out as a group against Bush's torture, and said they could get higher quality intelligence from a prisoner with a game of chess than all the waterboarding ever could, because once those hardline Nazis figured out that their enemy wasn't as evil and horrible as Hitler had told them, they sang like birds:
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
And any military historian worth his salt will tell you that intelligence was probably the single greatest single factor - other than perhaps Hitler's hubris - in the allied victory over the axis.
So you can listen to your right-wing buddies about torture...or you can listen to the men of the greatest generation who dealt with the Nazis, and you can listen to George Washington. Your choice.