© APA file photo of renovated Abu Ghraib prison, now renamed Baghdad Central Prison, Iraq.
On Tuesday, the Senate released its much-anticipated report outlining the CIA's brutal post-9/11 torture program. A few days before, the Islamic State (IS) group released what appears to be an "abhorrent" pamphlet to its followers with guidelines on how to capture, keep and sexually abuse female slaves, a reminder of the militant group's vicious tactics. Both document are testaments to the brutality of the war on terror, from the CIA interrogators fighting to "save American lives" to IS waging a bloody war against the West.
What's even more disturbing is how accounts of CIA and Islamic State torture - from the Senate report for the former and months of news reports from the latter - are, at times, virtually indistinguishable from one another. Speaking on the Senate floor after the release of the CIA torture report, Sen. John McCain passionately asserted that "our enemies act without conscience. We must not." As it turns out, that moment is long past.
Read the 13 torture accounts below see for yourself:
1. Prisoners were "routinely beaten and subjected to waterboarding."
2. The waterboarding of one prized prisoner devolved into a "series of near drownings," where the process induced convulsions and vomiting.
3. Prisoners were subjected to "rectal rehydration" or "rectal feeding."
4. Interrogators "chained [a prisoner's] feet to a bar and then hung the bar so that he was upside down from the ceiling. Then they left him there."
5. Prisoners were forcefully kept awake, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.
6. Detainees "were starved and threatened with execution by one group ... only to be handed off to another group that brought them sweets and contemplated freeing them."
7. Prisoners were subjected to extended isolation and experienced "hallucinations, paranoia and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation."
8. Prisoners were made to stand in "stress positions" on broken bones and prosthetic limbs.
9. Prisoners often spent weeks in complete darkness.
10. One prisoner was forced to watch interrogators beat another prisoner until "the whole cell was covered in blood" ... and then sleep in it.
11. One prisoner "shared a room with a decapitated body for days."
12. One prisoner was locked in what was described as a "dungeon," shackled with "only a bucket to use for human waste."
13. Prisoners were threatened with harm to their children or sexual abuse of their parents, including rape and torture.
BONUS. Prisoners were subjected to mock executions.
Islamic State: 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, Bonus
CIA interrogators: 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, Bonus
Comment: ISIS was, in part, trained and funded by the CIA. So it's really no wonder that both groups employ the same tactics.