Another Brick In The Wall

Apparently, there are wingnuts who are seriously trying to convince me that torturing people produced intelligence that helped to foil the L.A. Library Tower plot.

[...] The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York. [...]

Now, there are some comparatively level-headed voices out there who say the chronology here doesn't make sense. The plot was foiled in 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in March 2003.

Am I the only one here who remembers this?

[...] Also according to Mohammed, he and Majid were detained in the same place where two of Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s young children, ages about 6 and 8, were held. The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding. [...]

That's from a statement by the father of Majid Khan, a U.S. citizen detained and interrogated at Guantánamo who alleges that he was mistreated by U.S. forces.

I remember noticing reports of the capture of KSM's wife and children in September 2002. Wikipedia currently has a link to this report in Asia Times to that effect.

Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they remain.

Obviously, KSM didn't die in the raid— he escaped, and was later captured in March 2003.

But his wife and children may have given up the intelligence used to foil the Library Tower plot.