In an interview with The Washington Post [1], a U.S. Air Force counter-intelligence specialist explains that he was aghast when he saw how the U.S. was continuing to torture prisoners, even after he arrived in 2006. He further learned, based on first-hand interviews he conducted, that the torture committed by the United States in Iraq was resulting in thousands of American lives. To figure this out, all he had to do was listen (instead of torturing), then connect the dots:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib [2] and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces 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. 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. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.
[3]