Learning From The Experts

Since they took power in January 2001 BushCo™ has been accused of ignoring anyone who actually knows anything on a given subject in favor of ideological purity. Surprisingly, turns out to be untrue:

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

See? It's clear that the administration is willing to turn to experts for advice and when it comes to torture anyone would be wise to study the techniques used by brutal totalitarian regimes.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

I have a problem with that last part; credit should always be given when credit is due. Indeed, by not revealing the source BushCo™ has opened itself up to plagiarism charges. But I digress.

At any rate, it's good to see that BushCheney has decided to listen to experts for once although there are those who are even more expert in interrogation techniques than the ChiComs. Like the Geheime Staatspolizei, for instance.

But it's a good start nonetheless.

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