Years of intelligence gathering, including details gleaned from controversial interrogations of Al Qaeda members during the Bush administration, ultimately led the Navy SEALs who killed Usama bin Laden to his compound in Pakistan.

The initial threads of intelligence began surfacing in 2003 and came in the form of information about a trusted bin Laden courier, a senior U.S. official told Fox News on condition of anonymity. Bin Laden had cut off all traditional lines of communication with his network by this time because the Al Qaeda leader knew the U.S. intelligence community was monitoring him. It was said that he also didn’t even trust his most loyal men to know his whereabouts and instead communicated only through couriers.

But it was four years later, in 2007, that terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay military prison started giving up information about the key courier.

Around this time, the use of enhanced interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, were being denounced as torture by critics of the Bush administration. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney came under intense pressure for supporting rough treatment of prisoners. Critics claimed that any information given under duress simply couldn’t be trusted.

It is an argument that Bush and Cheney strongly rejected then, and now.

“I would assume that the enhanced interrogation program that we put in place produced some of the results that led to bin Laden's ultimate capture,” Cheney told Fox News on Monday, a hint of vindication in his voice.

Information was given up by prisoners, including 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. U.S. officials described the courier as a talented protege and trusted associate of both Mohammed and Al Qaeda’s No. 3 leader at the time, Abu Faraj al Libi. Both men were held at Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. officials were told the courier’s name was known only to bin Laden’s innermost circle.

By 2009, the U.S. intelligence community had a rough idea of where the courier operated: a region north of Islamabad, Pakistan. It was another year before this compound was identified in August 2010 as a likely home for a senior Al Qaeda member.

The compound was eight times the size of other homes in the affluent neighborhood, and the impressive 18-foot-high walls with barbed wire drew scrutiny from intelligence analysts.

By early this year, information from multiple intelligence sources, including the now-shuttered harsh interrogation program, as well as CIA operatives and Special Operations Forces on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan, were building a clearer case that the compound might house bin Laden. Officials found out that there were three families living there. In addition, a significantly older man, who was shown deference by the group, was not required to work on the compound.

Critics of the Bush-era interrogation programs have suggested that the harsh interrogations were not essential to tracking bin Laden and that the information could have been obtained by more humane means. But for Cheney and other Bush administration alumni, Sunday’s raid stands as proof their system worked.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/02/bush-era-interrogations-provided-key-details-bin-ladens-location/

God Bless George Bush, God Bless Dick Cheney, the two MEN with the balls to do the right thing with interrogations to bring a ruthless killer to justice!

Faux News

Indeed! Notice that Faux news article covers up the fact that Bin Laden has been dead for years. A nice propaganda piece by the most popular propaganda outlet in Amerika.

That k in AmeriCa is a nice touch, good old fashioned communism right there.

Those same interrogation tactics that were deemed torture by so many no less. Funny how stuff the left doesn't like seems to get the job done. Wonder what the left today would say about the Enola Gay?

Thanks. Pretty fitting, considering Americans have already implemented all the planks of the Communist Manifesto into their policy, eh comrade?

Yep, ever since Jan 20, 2009

It was proven long ago that those interrogation tactics work, this is just more undisputable proof.

The day America died............

and 100 days later, tripled their debt... way to go barry...

He spent more in less then 100 days then President Bush did in 8 years including two wars.

and what was his excuse? bush...the lib answer for every problem...

He's spent more than Bush AND Clinton and we ain't got shiite to show for it!

It's the Blame Bush Syndrome, and not taking responsibility for his own actions. Hell, the first time he ever heard him use the word "I" or took credit for something in his entire Presidency was last night when he doesn't deserve much.........

Sure we do, we have the Messiah for President.

lol I'll give ya that one!

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News that if controversial interrogation tactics were successful in getting the intelligence needed to find and kill Usama bin Laden after more than 10 years, then those tactics need to stay in place.

"I would assume that the enhanced interrogation program that we put in place produced some of the results that led to bin Laden's ultimate capture," Cheney said of the George W. Bush administration in an interview with Fox News Monday.

"I'm sure we'll all learn more over the course of the next few days about exactly what happened... We need to keep in place those policies that made it possible for us to succeed in this case."

Cheney and President Bush went after bin Laden hard in the months following September 11, 2001, narrowly missing the Al Qaeda leader in the mountains of Tora Bora that December.

"We obviously worked aggressively over the course of the time we were in office," Cheney said.

For that reason, it seems, President Obama called both Bush and Bill Clinton before announcing to the nation that UBL was in fact killed in a Navy Seals operation just outside Islamabad, Pakistan. Cheney, however, first heard bin Laden was dead Sunday night on TV.

"I don't have the kind of detailed insight now that I would have had two or three years ago. Basically what I have seen to date about this operation is what has been in the newspapers."

Cheney, who came under attack as VP and in the years since for his controversial views on rough treatment of detainees including waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, said he has heard press reports detailing that types of torture may have garnered some of the intel used to find bin Laden, but that he didn't know enough to "speak authoritatively."

"Bin Laden is dead," Cheney declared, "[But] we have to be on our guard. We are still at war."

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/05/02/cheney-says-enhanced-interrogation-probably-led-ubl-death

Agreed!!!!!!!!!!! Waterboard their Azzes, keep the black sites open and keep G-Bay open!