re: #572 Killgore Trout

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.

I’m not sure how to argue with this - it appears you don’t read newspapers or listen to anything but Fox. In fact it appears you didn’t even read what I wrote. Let me try, anyway.

Not all followers of Islam are terrorists. Not all terrorists are elites, dedicated to success or death (or through death as the case may be).

Most do not think we are “American zionist blood drinking vampire rapists.”

Actually, during the Bush years if you were high value you were more likely to be shipped to a “black” prison and become a ghost. There were a few articles about that and if you can’t find them ask and I’ll see if I can link a few. As to recent captures, I’ll give the example of Mullah Baradar in February of this year. Or perhaps you’d prefer the April capture of Nazal Sabar al-Jughaify.

As to what I wrote, you completely ignored the behavior of those who might be our allies, or who if not could be persuaded to not help the terrorists. When we torture, we convince these in the middle that the other guys have a case when they call us evil.

Torture works. It just works worse, and it creates additional problems on every level to include the gradual destruction of the torturer’s humanity.