Senator Burr

The NY Times article further contradicts Burr's assertion:

... two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times — repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier’s identity.

Glenn L. Carle, a retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002, said in a phone interview Tuesday, that coercive techniques “didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information.” He said that while some of his colleagues defended the measures, “everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.”

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MSNBC on Tuesday reported that Senator Burr said the death of Osama Bin Laden was a direct result of enhanced interrogations (aka torture). Burr once again is caught misrepresenting the facts to justify another of his failed policy positions.

From MSNBC:

“The information that eventually led us to this compound was the direct result of enhanced interrogations; one can conclude if we had not used enhanced interrogations, we would not have come to yesterday's action,” US Senator Richard Burr in a telephone interview with CNBC.

The facts don’t back up Sen. Burr’s statement. The evidence suggests a key piece of intelligence, the first link in the chain of information that led to bin Laden wasn't retrieved through torture. In other words, torture failed to produce it.

Although NC voters supported Democrats in 2006 and 2008, and the state went for a Democrat for President in 2008, the political map of North Carolina was painted bright red on Tuesday. The US Congress will be divided between the major political parties beginning in 2011, and so will the NC Congressional delegation.

Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) successfully defended his US Senate seat, and as expected, defeated two challengers with ease. The polls had been trending in his favor in the past week, and the Republican won with over 55% of the state’s votes yesterday.