Terrorism analyst Erick Stakelbeck said that the release of a report on the CIA’s interrogation tactics showed that the U.S. counterterrorism policy was "upside down," and that in 2015 the world will witness "more of the same" brutality by groups like the Islamic State (commonly referred to as IS, ISIS or ISIL) and al Qaeda.
"Everything that’s evil is good and everything that’s good is evil today," Stakelbeck told Fox’s Neil Cavuto on Tuesday.
"That's the situation we’re in now, where we're paying more attention to brave CIA folks doing their job to keeps this country safe. Meanwhile, ISIS is hacking off the heads of American journalists and we're not too concerned about that.
"Everything is upside-down and 2015, unfortunately, we're going to see more of the same. These guys are not going to stop. They must be confronted or they're going to keep pushing forward."
Stakelbeck said IS’s horrific actions have motivated other terror groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in Pakistan to carry out more high-profile attacks to compete for international media attention.
"I think we're going to see more and more, unfortunately, of opposing Islamic terrorist groups also raising the bar with new acts of horrific violence," Stakelbeck said.
"We've really opened up the gates to something really nasty here."
Despite this competition and differing approaches, Stakelbeck says IS and al Qaeda ultimately have the same goals.
"As we go forward in 2015, we could see more and more terrorist groups line up behind ISIS. Al Qaeda might be tough to reel in. They have a lot of pride; they're long established," Stakelbeck said.
"Other groups may get on board with ISIS without a doubt. They all have the same goal--it's that caliphate and global domination."