There is no evidence that the information obtained from waterboarding even led to these captures and that they would not have been captured via traditional means just as the three original suspects had been.
Sure there is. The info that KSM gave up directly led to the capture of Riduan Isamuddin, responsible for the 2002 bombings of night clubs in Bali. Abu Zubaydah was the guy that fingered KSM and gave detailed information about the 9/11 attacks and the organizational structure of al quaeda. Most importantly, some of the information given up by these two guys was responsible for thwarting the al quaeda plot to blow up multple airliners in 2006.
You keep saying that traditional methods would have worked, however the facts are that these guys didn't say anything until they were waterboarded. Once they were, they sang. According to one of the CIA interrogators, after KSM had given some information he started to resist again, and all they had to do was show him the board and he began talking again.
Waterboarding is effective, period. It cracked hardened terrorists where everything else failed. You may not like it for moral/political reasons, however its effectiveness isn't something you can deny.
For decades the intel community has regarded waterboarding as torture and has regarded torture and unjust and unreliable. You have to be pretty weak in the grey matter department to think that one exaggerated, or even fabricated example, to the contrary by a questionable administration would suddenly negate that fact.
Thats pretty interesting, because as far as the intelligence community goes, I think we will agree that the CIA is the authority. It was the CIA that went to the administration to get approval to waterboard, not the other way around.
If the CIA is the one asking permission to waterboard, that kind of kills your theory that the intel community believes waterboarding is useless.
If you use a wee bit of logic, if waterboarding didn't work, then the CIA would already be aware of this fact. Why then would they go to all this trouble to ask permission and open themselves to public scrutiny to do something that would work. They wouldn't. If they wanted to torture, they would do it, not film it and certianly not ask permission.
Of course, if it did work, then that would explain why they made the effort.