Greg Sargent has got a hold of Panetta's letter to McCain on the intelligence that led to bin Laden. Money quote:
Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier’s role were alerting. In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.
The closest Panetta comes to naming torture as a factor was that at least two tortured prisoners lied about the key courier's role. But the general impression is that this was a massive, long, often scrupulous effort in which torture played no critical role and led to false information along the way.
I take Stephen Carter's point that torture can provide glimmers of truth amid a welter of falsehoods. Pragmatically, the argument against it is that its confusing results are less helpful than far, far more reliable old-fashioned Western interrogation techniques. The principled argument against it is that it destroys human freedom, debases the torturers, spreads lies like cancer through any fair judicial system and recruits Jihadists more powerfully than any other factor interrogators have come across.
But to to a thug like Cheney, 9/11 was the excuse to unleash evil against evil. No wonder it ended up a draw.
The Dish 