Of course. And those responsible for releasing it must have foreseen this, and allowing their desire for political gain to overwhelm any residual sense of responsibility they might still have felt to protect American citizens. “Senate Torture Report Is Propaganda Bonanza for Islamic Militants, Feds Say,” by Mike Levine, ABC News, December 9, 2014:
The Senate’s newly-released report on alleged torture of terror detainees after the 9/11 attacks is “unlikely” to inspire near-term attacks inside the U.S. homeland, but it is “very likely” to be used by terrorist groups for their future propaganda, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned local law enforcement across the country today.
“The FBI, DHS, and [National Counterterrorism Center] assess the most likely impact of the report will be attempts by foreign terrorist organizations … and their online supporters to exploit the report’s findings by claiming they confirm the U.S. government’s perceived hypocrisy and oppression of Muslims,” the FBI and DHS said in a joint intelligence bulletin distributed within hours of the report’s release.
Al Qaeda-linked groups and the Islamic State, the Iraq-based group also known as ISIS that has occupied large swaths of northern Syria and western Iraq, have often made U.S. detention and interrogation policies a central theme of their online messaging. Such critiques are “likely attempts to validate supporters’ existing grievances and convince them to pursue attacks in the Homeland or travel overseas to fight,” the bulletin said.
The bulletin noted that in brutal videos released by ISIS showing the beheadings of American and British hostages, the captives wore orange jumpsuits “reminiscent of those used by U.S.-held prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.”
The online propaganda campaign by ISIS has proved effective, inspiring scores of Americans and thousands of others from around the world to join terrorists in Iraq and neighboring Syria. And the bulletin said such Americans who have been radicalized online are still likely to prioritize joining ISIS overseas rather than launching their own attack inside the United States.
Specifically, the bulletin concluded that homegrown terrorists “are unlikely to mobilize to violence in the near term as a direct result of the information released” in the Senate report because many aspects of the CIA program had already been “widely publicized,” and past attacks by homegrown terrorists “have typically not been linked to public disclosures of U.S. detention and interrogation activities.”…
On Monday, the White House warned that the Senate report could spark violence against U.S. interests outside the United States.
Renee says
All things hidden shall be brought in the light. If there was nothing to hide, then there is nothing to report. Or the report would not cause such hurt.
Meanwhile, there is no excuse if indeed the brutalities and humiliations described in the report happened. Isn’t the saying:
” with liberty and justice for ALL” or does ALL not include all? Some of the methods described are so atrocious and cannot be justified in anyway or context. I am sure I am not the only human out here that feels this way.
That this is now exposed, is indeed with the consequence of possible repercussions. But a people that is unaware of its history is deprived of the future. That is also a consequence of not publishing a report. Again: provided the report is truthful.
No Fear says
The US got their interrogation techniques from the “prophet” Mohammed:
“After the last fort of the Jewish settlement called Khaybar was taken by Muhammad and his men, the chief of the Jews, called Kinana ibn al-Rabi, was asked by Muhammad to reveal the location of some hidden treasure. When he refused, Muhammad ordered a man to torture Kinana, and the man “kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead.” Kinana was then beheaded, and Muhammad took his young wife Safiyya as a concubine.” – Ibn Ishaq’s earliest biography of Mohammed.
Leslie says
Talk about people who are unaware of history! You silly person! “Liberty and justice for all.” is for American Citizens, not our enemies who want to cut off our heads. If you want to see real torture, go to an Iranian prison. Honestly! There is just no excuse for such naiveté.
Renee says
So, no justice for enemies, what does bringing a person to justice mean then?
Is justice an exclusive right for US citizens?
Wow.
eduardo odraude says
To all, here is an important video documenting the increasing climate of intimidation, censorship, and self-censorship of public criticism of Islam:
Link:Join the Conversation
Renee says
Church Shirley Ann, CHURCH
Kepha says
Actually, almost all rights, liberties, and protections of the law extend to persons lawfully in the US as well. Green Card holders have all the rights of citizens except voting and holding public office. It’s one reason why the USA had been a magnet for immigration and foreign investment.
gp says
Renee is spouting typical leftist crap and liberal hogwash. The OhhBummer and his vile cronies just had to throw the entire intelligence community under the bus before the new congress starts delousing Capital Hill next year. After 9/11 I am certain everybody was told- do whatever it takes to get the bad guys, but no rough stuff and remember their civil rights. That is why you just take them to any other country in the region and let them do whatever they need to do.
ISIS is the Obama legacy. He is such a rotten President that he almost makes Carter look good.
Judi says
gp – you are spot on with your comment.
Renee says
I am not at all a leftist. Human rights are not left or right.
There is a confusion here in the discussion about the timing of there report and the content of the report. I am talking about the content, not the timing.
Anonymous says
Opinions about what consitutes a “human right” are a matter of left and right.
jsteves2000 says
“ALL” ONLY FOR .U. S.. CITIZENS, THOSE IN THE U.S.LEAGALLY AND OUR FRIENDLY ALLIES. OUR ENEMIES DO NOT FALL UNDER THE “ALL” CATAGORY. IN WAR MAYBE NOT.BUT IN WAR HOW MANY FOLLOW THE GENEVA CONVENTION???
quotha raven says
Well, Renee, I’d like to know how you assess this “report” as to its “honesty” when not a single CIA operative or boss was approached/interviewed for it. If you can’t recognize this action (the publication of the report at this time and Feinstein’s comments) as naked propaganda, then you are really not of the intellectual caliber of the respected posters here at JW. You write well, but the fog from which your observations emanate is…familiar and blindingly knee-jerk.
albert says
The saying is as old as the hills and it applies in this case ” fight fire with fire ”
as for the scumbag terrorists here’s another ” he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword ”
don’t waste your sympathy on this filth.
No Fear says
Were they reciting verses from the bible while they beheaded the inmates of Guantanamo?
William says
Although I am against the release of this information, now that it is out I believe that if some should be punished for the activities, it should be Bush and all the higher-ups in the chain of command. The lowly actors should get absolution. I feel this way because when push comes to shove, Bush and his assistants will pass the blame on to their underlings. It is time for the elites to start facing the music for a change.
pennant8 says
Keep in mind that this is an administration that by blaming the Benghazi attack on a stupid video tacitly suggested that Muslim jihadists are like violent children who must be accommodated at all times lest they fly into an uncontrollable rage and do things like burn down consulates and murder the people within.
Based on their response to the Benghazi attack the administration is on record that they do in fact believe that jihadists can be set off by the littlest things, but they went ahead and provoked them anyway.
Kepha says
pennant8, this maladministration, while stripping the country of its ability to defend itself, has also tacitly implied that free speech rights are too dangerous to be left to ordinary Americans and lawful permanent residents. That was the real meaning of blaming the Benghazi attacks on an obscure video.
Custos Custodum says
Sadly, that is exactly right. Another stepping stone along this road was the vote by House Democrats to effectively abolish the First Amendment itself:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/11/gop-blocks-democrats-push-rewrite-first-amendment-/
We need to remember that many of these seemingly random and haphazard actions and events were planned and are being coordinated by some very dark interests with very long-term plans and an extremely sophisticated understanding of how to shape “public opinion.”
Myxlplik says
No wonder why Al Baghdadi fired up the State run sex slave trade, we are so busy fretting and handwringing over putting bugs on them, and dripping water on their faces, clearly we don’t have the stomach to oppose them.
Have we lost sight of exactly who and what we are fighting?
Renee says
They had no lawyer, some were innocent, and with respect to stomach, having to mash your lunch that then is inserted rectally is disgusting, humiliating, dangerous. In my view ” having stomach” is telling the truth. Truth about the threat of islam, yes please!, but also the truth about unjustified torture by people that are supposed to keep us safe from harm.
Myxlplik says
Haven’t heard much truth about Islam in the MSM, and I don’t know if I believe the validity of food enemas, but getting an enema is generally considered elective therapy or part of a radiology exam. Hardly a crime against humanity, if they swapped out barium or water for pureed lamb.
And lawyers aren’t always available on the battlefield.
Myxlplik says
I’m all for the truth btw, as long as the whole story is told. If they are going to post this report then accurately repost this too. http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/12/10/the-battle-for-jerusalem/
Because of our media and leadership this country is still in the dark about the relationship between mainstream Islam & ISIS. A lot of torture and bloodshed could be avoided with the whole truth I think. I doubt they could even sell any of the wars if there was honesty.
gravenimage says
Interesting that “Renee”—who allegedly wants the truth about Islam told—has so far as I can remember never shown up here until now, where she is wringing her hands over the questioning of savage Jihadists.
This ploy is the “slippery slope” concept, where it is implied that if we ever engaged in “enhanced interrogation” of Jihadists, that we have so lost the moral high ground that we might as well just roll over for those beheading children, since we (supposedly) are no better.
Renee says
Amusing, please do your homework. I have posted before, and I am deeply concerned about the rise of islam in the world. What also worries me is that so many here do not seem to have any reserve with how to interrogate SUSPECTS. And about 20% of those suspects were innocent according to the report (again, if the report tells the truth). With no defence and traumatised for life. Ah, they are not Americans, so what. Same as Kufrs?
gravenimage says
Actually, I do stand corrected on one point: I’ve read through several different threads this morning, and Renee has indeed been posting elsewhere.
The idea, however, that Americans treat suspects just the same as do ravening Jihadists is grotesque and false moral equivalence.
The idea that the civilized West is no better than Islam is, in fact, one of the main problems we have in facing the Jihad threat.
Renee says
That I say amen to. But your last sentence is exactly the point I want to make here continually: we have other (better) standards when it comes to treating prisoners of war, if the ones in the report can be considered that way. The report apparently has found that we are not treating suspects (!) according to what a normal conscience would allow. Justice means that the type of punishment is correlated with the crime. If someone is innocent and kept in a coffin-sized room for over a week,or if someone dies almost naked on the cold floor without having had the opportunity for a spokesman on behalf of him, then that is injustice. Do we not want justice everywhere? It sounds like all are perfectly OK when justice is just here in North America. Then why are we over there in other countries, just to protect ourselves, or do we also think that we need to stand up for justice for others? Perhaps I overrated the motives of our efforts to fight islam. Then that is indeed naive (and rather disappointing as well).
gravenimage says
*Of course* we have better standards—pretending that some idiot putting panties on some prisoner’s head is an “atrocity” just like beheading children is makes the whole concept meaningless.
Actually, many would go further than that, where our making someone listen to the Stones, say, is *worse* than Jihadists cutting the throats of journalists and aid workers.
Renee says
If you can’t beat them join them? Become a beast-like as well?
Arg says
I don’t think releasing this report gives them any ammunition they weren’t using already. Actually it might make things better PR wise, as it shows that (unlike our enemies) we DO introspect and criticize ourselves.
We shouldn’t conflate our (legitimate) desire for justice with interrogation policy. People like KSM deserve a lot worse than the mild forms of torture they’ve been subjected to, but that’s not the point of interrogation. The methods described in the report could be justified IF and only if they produced crucial life saving intelligence. That they have done so is dubious at best. Otherwise they just make us look bad, and hurts us diplomatically with other countries, particularly when we criticize their human rights.
It’s quite possible that more brutal torture would produce results, but we aren’t a society that would (or should) ever reach those depths. The question isn’t whether the detainee is guilty or deserving of punishment (in most cases they deserve far worse), but whether we want to have people who have brutalized others roaming free in our society, picking our children up from school, running our police departments etc. We have no right to make someone a torturer, because the inherent desensitization to violence destroys that person as well as endangers the rest of society.
(I say all of this despite being completely aware of the seriousness of our war against islamism).
Cy Halothrin says
While I’m all for taking the gloves off when it comes to the Islamo nutcases, that doesn’t justify random torture, especially when many of the victims were actually innocents. We can’t afford to become beasts just because our enemies are.
To make it worse, it doesn’t seem that all that torture even produced any useful information. People will say anything to make the pain stop, so they implicate others who in turn are forced to confess to crimes they didn’t commit while implicating still others, and the chain of imagined villains only grows while the real villains just laugh. We should have learned from the Spanish inquisition and witch hunts of previous centuries that this will not work.
Fighting terrorism is not easy, but setting up a pointless gulag does not help.
gravenimage says
Cy Halothrin (another poster I have never seen here before) wrote:
While I’m all for taking the gloves off when it comes to the Islamo nutcases, that doesn’t justify random torture, especially when many of the victims were actually innocents.
……………………………….
I suppose that explains why so many of these “innocents” have returned to Jihad upon being released…sarc/off
Kepha says
Well, the Inquisition kept Spain solidly Catholic for about three centuries. Similar methods kept the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Kim, and Castro pretty secure, too. They may be bad for the rest of us, but they have a certain effectiveness, much as I hate to admit it.
gravenimage says
Also, describing Guantanamo Bay—where inmates are supplied with Halal food, movie nights, and Qur’ans untouched by the hands of the “filthy Kuffar” as a “Gulag” could not be more ludicrous.
Sam says
Summary of the situation: Obama is a TRAITOR OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
Tradewinds says
Can someone notify Spencer to stop “Christy” (aka Abdullah) from spamming this same comment all the time?
Myxlplik says
Christy,
None of your moral equivocations link doctrine specifically to violence. I think over the years Robert has proven beyond all doubt the link between Islamic doctrine, and the specific words and deeds of Mohammed as a link for violence and discrimination by Muslims toward non-Muslims.
I fail to see the purpose of your spam, other than to show that there are random acts of bigotry that happen in the world, and some would use that to mislead others from the point.
Brian Hoff says
The Roman Empire under some empour went after the christian in some cases rapeing the christian young girl who where vigin and woman who where marry to make then raise illegisn childern and there where no Islam or muslim in the world back then. Quite afew muslim in america are upset that CAIR is allies with than homosexual group which fight for homosexual civil right. There is series of ficttion booh that have than alien race invade Earth in ealry 1942 forceing America, the UK, Germany,USSR and Japon to become allies against the alien threat
pumbar says
Than laien race is you than member of? Diocletian than raise ileegisn childern in than Illyricum at not least. Than.
gravenimage says
“Brian Hoff”—really, “DefenderofIslam”—has to go back two thousand years to the Roman Empire make his point about non-Muslim persecution of Christians. And when he fails to find any other Infidels engaged in such systematic persecution, he is reduced to citing bad science fiction.
Just pathetic.
Mongoose says
In the interests of fairness we should denounce all forms of torture and adopt the humane and civilized treatment used by Jihadists on their captives.
gravenimage says
Grimly hilarious.
Arthur says
“On Monday, the White House warned that the Senate report could spark violence against U.S. interests outside the United States.”
Oh no. We’ve really turned a corner now. This is entirely new territory. We should be alarmed. *YAWN*
quotha raven says
Arthur – I’m still too horrified at likely deserter Bo Bergdahl’s having been traded for a bunch of top-level jihadist bosses from Gitmo to ratchet up my alarm any more without exploding!
Salah says
“..he (Muhammad) had their hands and feet cut off. Then he ordered for nails which were heated and passed over their eyes, and whey were left in the Harra (i.e. rocky land in Medina). They asked for water, and nobody provided them with water till they died.”
Sahih al-Bukhari 6419 صحيح البخارى
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2012/03/muhammad-and-torture.html
Myxlplik says
An American Rep, Louie Ghomert, who gets it. He talks a lot about Egypt midway through. Though you and others might like this.
http://youtu.be/V80FevvbM8Q
Myxlplik says
More grilling Holder on the Brotherhood.
http://youtu.be/QkbgJGZTVP0
gravenimage says
This thread has really brought out the Muslim apologists. No surprise, then, that “Christy” would be here with her usual cut-and-paste spam.
eduardo odraude says
Christy,
What you don’t seem to understand is that none of the extremist forces you mention, except for Islam, threatens the liberal tradition of Europe (and therefore of the U.S.) in such a profound way. Even with a mere three million Muslims in the U.S. there are already very numerous documented cases of self-censorship by institutions and public figures, writers, and journalists afraid to criticize Islam publicly. Here’s a link to a whole slew of links to news stories documenting the incredible amount of admitted self-censorship in fear of Muslim violence: Islamic Intimidation and the death of free speech in the U.S. and Europe
Davegreybeard says
@ Christy
“The point is that extremism and intolerance of whatever stripe, not Islam, is the threat.”
I’m not buying your Leftist Atheist, bullshit, Christy and neither is anyone else here who is actually paying attention to what’s going on in the world.
So take your hidden agenda driven obfuscation and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
Lanie says
We can’t take the moral high ground when we, as a nation, condone the barbaric, tortuous and inhumane intentional extermination of the developing human being within the womb of the mother, which has occurred millions of times and is a reality every day.
Nor can we take the moral high ground when we elect politicians who not only despise liberty, our Constitution, the rule of law, common sense, blind justice, and defend criminals and terrorists, but also tirelessly work to destroy the minds, hearts and souls of the people of this nation with their lies, corruption, propaganda and brainwashing called “education”, and their lust for power and control over every aspect of our lives.
As a nation, if we want to survive, we have to realize that the barbarians of Islam cannot be turned back from their quest to dominate the world unless we accept that our survival will force us to do things that are against the moral standards of Western civilization.
This is a battle of survival, plain and simple. We don’t practice the moral standards of Western Civilization when we exterminate millions of the unborn who aren’t intent on either killing us or subjecting us to the totalitarian religion/philosophy of Islam, so it makes no sense for us not to use any and all means to ensure our survival against the rule of Islam.
Leslie says
Hear, hear!
Leslie says
I would say that at 81 years of age, perhaps she is senile. But Senator Feinstein has a long career of leaking information:
1) In 1985-When serial killer, Richard Ramirez, was part-way through his rampage, then-San Francisco Mayor Feinstein, without consulting police, held a news conference and displayed released information known only to the police and intended to be kept secret in order to nab the killer. She held before the cameras the model of Avia shoes that Ramirez had been wearing to each of the murder sites. When Ramirez saw the news conference on television, he threw the shoes off the Golden Gate Bridge and used a different pair for future murders. She also released other deliberately withheld evidence, Police had been keeping secret.
2) Back in 2009, she shocked the U.S. intelligence community when she took it upon herself to release to the press the fact that the United States was conducting drone strikes originating out of Pakistan air bases.
3) Feb. 2012 – Israel’s diplomatic and military correspondents got quite the surprise watching the live feed of the Senate Intelligence Committee when Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) revealed the head of the Mossad had made a secret visit to Washington earlier this week to hold talks with senior U.S. officials.
Nothing new with this little canary. Maybe the fact that she has amassed between 50 and 90 million as a public servant ought to be investigated?