Think Progress notes another first-hand account.
I am quite sure that there will all sorts of verbal gymnastics and intellectual contortions employed to "prove" that the writer (a) isn't who he claims to be; (b) is overstating the use of various torture techniques; (c) admits there is no way to prove that torture has hurt the pursuit of our interests anyway, if it were used. Since folks who manage to employ each and every one of these arguments are impermeable to reason, I'll leave it to the rest of you to make of it what is obviously there:
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. 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.
It is obvious that this soldier is an enemy of the state and should be shot immediately.
