Torture report

[Thumpalumpacus]

After watching people jump to their deaths to escape the burning towers on 911 and after the release of videos showing the beheadings of American captives by al qaeda and other terrorist groups, I don't care how we extract information from terrorist prisoners.

I do. We're Americans, and we're supposed to stand for right. Defending a government that tortures its enemies certainly wasn't what I had in mind when I enlisted in the Air Force, and to me these acts spat upon my honorable and loyal service.

Back in 1943, there was a terrific debate in the UK over the morality of the area-bombing of Germany. In the face of continued cries of "But they did it to us first!", the Anglican Bishop of Chichester replied, according to Churchill, "But we do not take the Devil to be our example."

Never mind the fact that what little information we got was virtually useless, as pointed out in the bullet-points above.

The release of the CIA report will only aid in the recruitment propaganda for al qaeda and will further put Americans, our military personnel and our allies at risk abroad.

I think what aids their recruitment is our continued meddling in the affairs of the region coupled with our support for Israel and certain of the Arab monarchies.

Furthermore, these atrocities, and that's what they are, are already widely known in the Arab world, and have already been used to stoke hatred for us. That happened when pictures of Specialists England and Graner posing over the prisoners they'd tortured were released back in 2005. The propaganda value of pictures ten years old is lessened by the passage of time and the fact that the victims were soldiers of a regime despised by most religious Muslims.