Once again, a US intelligence leak has confirmed what we – we of the US intelligence community – have known for quite some time: the Iraq War isn’t helping with this whole problem of radical Islam.

Fragments of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, completed in April, and published in part in the Washington Post and the New York Times last week, indicate that the war in Iraq is fomenting radical Islamist resistance and making the US and her allies more susceptible to future attack.

This Estimate appeared on the heels of the previous week’s skirmish and recent “compromise” over Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “cruel treatment and torture.” After months spent denying the use of torture and the existence of secret CIA interrogation facilities, the Bush administration finally scored its get-out-of-jail-free card. They don’t have to bother with denials any longer because “torture” is now subject to the President’s own definition.

President Bush’s response to the assertion that the Iraq War is spreading radicalism amounted to mere insistence that the leaked statements had been taken out of context from the broader scope of the Intelligence Estimate – which he further insists contains analysis consistent with his own characterisations of the war in Iraq and the ongoing Global War on Terrorism. And evidently, Arizona Senator John McCain was so content with the “suitable compromise” he forged salvaging the current wording of the Geneva Conventions – but not the application – he had scant to say about the Estimate.

If only they’d listen to what we – who’ve actually been there – have to say.

From June 2004 to January 2005, I completed over 130 combat interrogations at Abu Ghraib, as part of the US Army’s post-scandal mission to “change the face of Abu Ghraib.” No torture. And make sure that’s what ends up on camera.

I’ll be the first to declare, on that count, mission accomplished. But I can also count on one hand the number of men I interrogated who were guilty of anything worse than being Arabs in Baghdad. Thanks to the Presidential War Powers Act, we had the authority to arrest, detain, and interrogate these men over the course of numerous months. No warrants. No charges. Certainly, no lawyers. I have no idea if a single man I interrogated ever was released from US custody.

That was just the beginning. I’m only one of many.

On 16 September 2005, a then-unknown, but highly decorated US Army Captain named Ian Fishback wrote a letter to Senator McCain, describing the culture of abuse prevalent throughout the theatre of combat. The silence of the US media was so deafening, even Time magazine’s inclusion of Fishback in their May 2006 “100 Most Influential People” did not change the fact that this honor-clad West Point graduate is, well, still unknown and, by the looks of things, still unheeded.

It doesn’t seem to matter that Fishback recounted things like “death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to the elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation, and degrading treatment.” Oddly enough, this is the same language, nearly verbatim, used in Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which the President may now interpret definitively.

Nor does it seem to matter that the cleverly nipped and tucked poster-child for US detention practices, Abu Ghraib, conducted itself – before and after its media face lift – according to a West Wing-engineered policy that detains persons not for actually breaking laws, but for merely “possessing information” regarding threats to Coalition forces. The population of potential interrogatees is statistically appealing: Iraq has roughly 26 million of them.

In August 2004 General Miller announced to my entire interrogation facility that Coalition forces had “the sanction to kill or capture all anti-democratic forces” – crafted terminology that was likely the result of much debate and compromise. Unsurprisingly, the precise definition of “anti-democratic” never made it into the press releases.

And all this while, people like Fishback and I have been interrogating taxi drivers detained for months on end and suffering chain-of-command threats for telling the truth about men whose legs are still having legs crushed by baseball bats. The President, on the other hand, has denied, confirmed, and now made legal – thanks to the compromise rendered by McCain and company – secret CIA interrogation facilities and “alternative” interrogation techniques.

So, what was all this fuss about some Estimate, the rise of radical Islamist sentiment and the Iraq War? I don’t know. I think it’s classified. Classified, like all of the things my friends and I did, which are apparently winning an entire war Bush gets to deny, confirm, legalize and define.

Maybe we should ask the Tipton Three, or the slews everyday Iraqis lining Coalition detention facilities. I’m sure they rest comfortably with Bush’s rhetoric and human rights definitions. I’m sure they would be happy to sit down with Senator McCain and craft suitably compromising language rendering more carte blanches for Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and all the other CIA wherever-they-ares.

So don’t listen to us – we few who were actually there. We may say some things you don’t want to hear. And, as Stephen Colbert has told us, that’s super depressing in an election season.