Freshman senator wants to know if waterboarding helped nab bin Laden

Freshman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Thursday advocated for a review to determine whether or not advanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, assisted the CIA in finding Osama bin Laden.

“We need to find out how this information was gathered,” Rubio said in an interview with the news website Tampa Bay Online.

{mosads}Rubio was referring to the question of whether waterboarding — or simulated drowning — and other enhanced interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration helped the CIA learn about the courier who led the CIA to bin Laden’s front door at a compound in Pakistan.

In January 2009 President Obama banned the military and intelligence services from using waterboarding and other practices considered by some to be torture.

Rubio said he wanted to return to the question of waterboarding as matter of national security and not to score political points.

“Again, this is not for the purposes of saying we were right and you were wrong; it’s for understanding what works and what doesn’t,” said Rubio.