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© Reuters/StringerA fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul, June 23, 2014. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held crisis talks with leaders of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region urging them to stand with Baghdad in the face of a Sunni insurgent onslaught that threatens to dismember the country. Picture taken June 23, 2014.

The United States stands accused of many of the brutal techniques used by ISIL, a terrorist group President Barack Obama has vowed to "degrade and ultimately destroy," a journalist and political commentator says.

"He says that these terrorists that he is fighting now are unique in their brutality," Anna O'Leary said in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday. "What I say to Obama is America is unique in its brutality around the world."

O'Leary likened ISIL kidnappings to the CIA's rendition program in which terrorism suspects are secretly rounded up and transferred to secret prisons to be interrogated and tortured.

"He [Obama] talks about the terrorists kidnapping, but what happens when America kidnaps people and takes them to Guantanamo," she asked.

"He also says that they execute captured prisoners," she said of Obama. "Well America executes people that are not even captured."

"He also accuses terrorists of enslaving (people) and raping them. Well we have cases where American soldiers have raped in some of these countries," O'Leary noted.

In a speech delivered from the White House on Wednesday, Obama said his administration was prepared to expand its bombing campaign against ISIL terrorists and launch airstrikes in Syria. "I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq."

O'Leary pointed out that the United States is expanding its military action "to annihilate ISIL which of course they created in the beginning."


Comment: The Covert Origins of ISIS


The United States and some of its regional allies, chief among them Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been supporting militant groups in Syria to fight the government there.