Yeah, Let's Do More Of That Thing That Turned Out To Be Completely Counterproductive
This worked out so well when we did it before.
On the January 7 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, strategic analyst Ralph Peters cited the [Paris] shooting to attack Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), invoking the recently released Senate Intelligence report on CIA interrogation techniques. Peters proclaimed that "these terrorists who did this monstrous attack in Paris are the people Senator Feinstein doesn't even want to waterboard" ...
Yes, really, he said that. Fox Nation turned the soundbite into a big, screaming headline:
Here's the clip:
Do I have to explain how counterproductive torture has been? Do I have to point out that torture is part of the reason one of the suspects was radicalized in the first place?
The pair believed to have carried out the murders were named as the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, French nationals of Algerian parentage aged 34 and 32, who were born in Paris’s 10th arrondissement.
Chérif was reportedly part of an Iraqi jihadi network of around 10 young Parisians that was dismantled in the nearby 19th arrondissement. He was sentenced to three years in prison with 18 months suspended in relation to terror charges in May 2008.
He was also among 13 men arrested in May 2010 on suspicion of plotting to break an infamous jihadist, Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, out of prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the Paris train bombing of 1995....
“He smokes, drinks, doesn’t have a beard, and has had girlfriends,” said [his lawyer, Vincent] Ollivier. He described himself as an “occasional Muslim”.
But the war in Iraq shocked Chérif, and he was said to be angered by treatment of Muslims at Abu Ghraib prison.
It was against this backdrop that he was pushed towards a jihadi recruiter.
(Emphasis added.)
Yes, let's go back to doing that -- look how well it worked when we did it before.
Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog