The vast majority of files found by US officers on laptops taken from Islamic State contain pornography, says Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spying arm.

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Flynn was repeatedly assigned to senior intelligence posts in Afghanistan and Iraq after 2001, before taking overall control of US military intelligence in 2012. The German newspaper Bild is now serializing a book detailing his experiences of the War on Terror.

“We looked a ruthless enemy in the eye, the one that raped and exploited women and children, boys and girls, who beheaded people because it pleased him and who watched pornography on his laptop,” writes Flynn, who retired in 2014.

“At one point we actually had determined that the material on the laptops was up to 80 per cent pornography. These sick, psychopathic enemies were not only unimaginably hideous, but also treacherous and torn.”

Flynn said that seeing the hypocrisy of radical Islamists – ISIS officially punishes porn-watching with lashes – helped him “better understand the adversary,” who Flynn says was flexible, ruthless and capable of using modern technology to achieve its aims.

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Flynn’s revelations tally with previous anecdotal evidence about the viewing habits of radical Islamist martyrs. Famously, a “considerable quantity” of pornography was recovered at Osama bin Laden’s final Pakistan hideaway, and there had been previous reference to “terabytes” of explicit content being found on terrorists’ computers.

Various explanations have been posited about the prevalence of porn among radicals.

Islamic warriors exist in an environment that is by turns brutal and boring, removing existing social boundaries, and leaving recruits needing an outlet for their stressful existence. Like any army, ISIS is also a testosterone-filled environment, where women are hard to come by.

Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London, has also claimed that previous profiling of jihadists revealed that many chose to become warriors in the first place because they are “very badly adjusted in their relations with women,” and are therefore are “severe onanists.”

Several researchers have also suggested that jihadists' porn watching habits – both in their zeal and furtiveness – are not noteworthy, and make them much like the rest of humanity.

‘Evil of radical Islam’

Flynn, who left his agency abruptly, and under a cloud of speculation that he clashed with superiors and his team over his aggressive reform of intelligence methods, also reserved harsh words for President Barack Obama’s treatment of radical Islam.

“Leading US decision makers have shied away from any criticism of Islam since 9/11. Instead, they emphasize that Islam is a “religion of peace” despite evidence to the contrary. This denial of the existence of jihad has led to President Obama making an absurd claim that Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam,” writes Flynn.

“We will not win this war, if we will deny [the processes] that massively develop under our very nose,” he added, stressing that “it is high time we condemn the evil of radical Islam.”

Despite being a lifelong Democrat, Flynn has endorsed Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, and has even been touted as a potential running mate for the billionaire.