Torture as a recruiting tool
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Torture as a recruiting tool is the argument John Kiriakou makes when asked whether the practices of the war on terror did more harm than good. His answer is not hedged: "I am absolutely positive that that has been the case."

The claim

The formulation he gives it is deliberately unflattering to his own side, and it covers more than interrogation:

> "We always seem to step in a mud puddle, so to speak, where it comes to things like interrogations or drone strikes or attacks on individuals. These activities always serve to promote terrorist recruitment."

The occasion for it was a question about conditions at Guantánamo having become a recruiting tool for jihadists; Kiriakou accepted the premise and widened it, putting the targeted-killing programme in the same category as the interrogation one.

The arithmetic

What distinguishes his version of a common argument is that he attaches numbers to it, and dates them. "When we first began fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan we were talking about a core of just several hundred people. Well, now look at ISIS, which is sort of the next generation of al-Qaeda, we're talking about fighting something like 35,000 people."

The conclusion is stated as a share of responsibility rather than as a sole cause: "and I think that we've had a hand in that recruitment."

See also

- Enhanced interrogation techniques
- ISIS
- Guantanamo Bay
