of foreign fighters who came there were recruited because of our policy of torture and abuse. and it s undisputable that they made up 90% of the suicide bombers and that that cost us many american lives. but this isn t some grand revelation to us. i mean, look at the experience of our own prisoners of war in vietnam when they were tortured and the way that our own country reacted to that. how we increased our bombing campaign, we fought harder when we found out that our troops were being tortured. so this isn t some type of new information. what s disappointing to me is that time and time again these officials go on tv and say they support torture. that s a slap in the face to every professional interrogator who knows they can do their job without torture. you are exactly right. this is not new information but the fact is that the bushies continue to go out on the talking heads and say this stuff to lead the american people against president obama. i mean, what else could it be? this
number one recruiting tool in iraq and that it brought in droves of foreign fighters who killed american soldiers, hundreds if not thousands of american soldiers. and today there s press reporting, again, of another senior interrogator like myself. this one currently serving in afghanistan, who said just the mere fact that these former administration officials are on tv talking about how they would still torture is helping the taliban and al qaeda to continue to recruit new fighters. so this is going to continue to have a cost in american lives. so you re saying in a round about way tonight that the former bushies who are out on the talking heads right now are actually hurting the troops. i m not saying it in a round about way, ed. i m saying this is fact. department of defense tracked these statistics in iraq. it was a fact that the majority of foreign fighters who came there were recruited because of our policy of torture and abuse. and it s undisputable that they made up 90% of
enhanced interrogation methods. one more thing i think should be talked about because it is an outrage and i think both of you will agree, right now the interrogators who carried out this work and did so in the belief that what they were doing was lawful, authorized by the justice department, they face the threat of prosecution. that threat should be removed. they contributed to the outcome we saw. they contributed to president obama s greatest victory. they should not be prosecuted for that. jack, how do you feel about that? more importantly i would go after the people at the top of the heap ho did this. i would talk about the lawyers who actually said this was okay. i would talk about anybody up into the white house that said torture was legal. it was not and is not. how about answering the question? which question is that? should the interrogators be prosecuted? they face the threat of prosecution from eric holder right now. it seems to me they relied on the memos produced
general hyden the head of the cia said more than half of the intelligence we ve gained about al qaeda and its structures and processes came from these enhanced interrogation methods. one more thing i think should be talked about because it is an outrage and i think both of you will agree, right now the interrogators who carried out this work and did so in the belief that what they were doing was lawful, authorized by the justice department, they face the threat of prosecution. that threat should be removed. they contributed to the outcome we saw. they contributed to president obama s greatest victory. they should not be prosecuted for that. jack, how do you feel about that? more importantly i would go after the people at the top of the heap ho did this. i would talk about the lawyers who actually said this was okay. i would talk about anybody up into the white house that said torture was legal. it was not and is not. how about answering the question? which question is that? s
find out what we could do, how far we could go, what was legal and so forth. and out of that emerged what we call enhanced interrogation. and it worked. cheney, grasping at straws is he not? he has no definitive proof that any of the torture that he advocated actually worked. we all remember dick cheney s procedures and techniques for intel operations. if you don t agree with the boss he got outed. i think there was a movie about that. dick cheney has been the biggest attack dog against president obama and we have the tape to prove it. i wasn t a fan of his when he got elected and my views haven t changed any. i have serious doubts about his policies, serious doubts especially about the extent to which he understands and is prepared to do what needs to be done to defend the nation. president obama campaigned against it all across the country and now he s making some choices that in my mind will in fact raise the risk to the american people of another