re: #550 kirkspencer

Then there’s the strategic issue. Being known as torturers gives your opponents morale. It gives them a reason to resist. It makes opponents less willing to surrender, for surrender leads to a fate worse than death. Those who might have been ambivalent now fail to support you, and sometimes even move against you. Bluntly, it increases our casualties while making our effort more difficult.

Good points but I don’t think it effects enemy morale very much. Their beliefs about American zionist blood drinking vampire rapists are far beyond anything we do in reality anyways. I would much rather be a jihadi in the Bush years. If you’re high value enough you get shipped to gitmo and visits from the Red Cross. These days a drone sends a missile into your cave or if you’re captured you are never heard from again and probably stored permanently in a CIA warehouse in in rural Albania.
Have we publicly acknowledge the capture of any high value Al Qaeda since Obama’s been in office? I can’t think of any.