Top INterrogators Say Torture Cost American Lives

One of the Military’s Top Interrogators Says Torture Cost Hundreds ‘If Not Thousands’ Of American Lives

Washington’s Blog
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

One of the top military interrogators, head of an elite interrogation team in Iraq, who oversaw more than 1,000 interrogations, conducting more than 300 in Iraq personally, says that the use of torture has cost “hundreds if not thousands” of American lives.

“Torture does not save lives . . . And the reason why is that our enemies use it, number one, as a recruiting tool…These same foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight because of torture and abuse….literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives.”

Moreover, he says that many — as many as 90 percent — of those captured in Iraq said they joined the fight against the United States because of the torture conducted at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

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But perhaps most damning of the policy of torture is his statement that:

“The American principles of freedom and democracy are cherished in the Muslim world and the idea, at least, of America is still a seductive one. But it is the behavior of the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and secret prisons around the globe that undercuts that image, allowing Al Qaeda to make the argument that America isn’t what it stands for.”

“One of Al Qaeda’s goals, it’s not just to attack the United States, it’s to prove that we’re hypocrites, that we don’t live up to American principles,” Alexander said. “So when we use torture and abuse, we’re playing directly into one of their stated goals.”

Watch the video:

See this and this.

War Journalist May have to be Killed

Right-wing military writer: We may have to kill war journalists

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Former soldier Ralph Peters has carved out quite a niche for himself in the world of publishing. His work regularly lands on the pages of The New York Post and has cropped up in USA Today. He’s even a special contributor to Fox News.

But after today’s showing, in his latest column for the Journal of International Security Affairs, Mr. Peters seemingly treads very close to finding himself at odds with his journalistic colleagues.

After all, reporters don’t really like it when the editorial page calls for consideration of grinding them into bloody chunks as a matter of war policy.

In his latest essay, in a segment titled “The killers without guns,” Peters suggests that the media is responsible for “saving” Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, but that media had “failed to defeat” the U.S. government’s charge toward Iraq.

“Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar,” he gallingly charges.

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It culminates:

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

Because, of course, in Peters’ mind America can do no wrong:

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters.

Jason Linkins over at Huffington Post evicerates this stunning outpouring of hatred.

I must say, considering the line-up of Neoconservative half-stars that is the Journal of International Security Affairs editorial board, this tripe is not surprising.

This reporter, in a rare editorial capacity, can only personally hope the emergence of such breathtaking savagery disguised as intelligent discourse will serve as an example to other rational thinkers as to how dangerous hyper-militarism and hawkish Neoconservatism really is.