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I’m Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq

Read the entire article but notice my bold;

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. … It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.

This is not news, we were told that would be the result by the Bush’s own aids prior to this first hand information.

This interrogator is no queasy light weight either;

I’m not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator.

Here is first hand information about our practices;

interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

He describes how he refused these practices and used the techniques professionals use and know to be more effective by far then torture;

unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

Here’s an important passage and one that is missed by the entire right wing ideologues;

Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us,

That’s right, they were as militarized against al-qaeda as they were against us, they could have been our allies in the fight against al-qaeda and terrorism but we turned them against us and our cause

Now here is something I’ve been talking about for years, the fact that not only is the information acquired through torture unreliable and it impedes good information gathering techniques but the fact that the policies themselves prevent those who would have been sympathetic to our cause from cooperating;

A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate."

This is where he states the most brutal indictment against this administration and the policies that have put our nation at great risk, for now and generations to come;

The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001

We have a hero in this Iraqi interrogator, he is putting quite a bit at risk telling us what has been going on the cost to our country for time untold.

I have always said;

Endorsing policies of torture turn allies into enemies, enemies into terrorists, pacifists into militants, militants into terrorists and terrorists into heroes.

Those who endorse those policies need to be proscecuted for their crimes against our country as much as they need to be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity