US using torture/"interrogation" techniques lifted from old communist manuals

[syndicalist]

The New York Times and others broke this story with accompanying documents, although I had heard of this as long ago as perhaps a year or so, on NPR's Fresh Air or a similar radio program (will provide link when I find it). Basically, the story is that the US was and is using interrogation/torture techniques lifted from old communist manuals (see

Comments

[schonste]

Ughhhhhhhhhhhh

Mod note:

[ladypolitik]

Please place some of your content (particularly the image) behind a cut, please, thanks.

Re: Mod note:

[syndicalist]

I love it when you play all "constructive criticism," although I still miss the massive fonts, all caps + asterisks, and other typographical fireworks.

Re: Mod note:

[ladypolitik]

...What?

Read the community rules.

Re: Mod note:

[syndicalist]

I revised the post by putting the scan and all after it behind a cut.

I remember that joke.

[ladypolitik]

There was an old joke that whenever, during the Cold War, the USSR would do something -- like, say, launch a satellite into space, or develop some new technology (like detonating the Tsar Bomba bomb, which had 1.4% the power of the Solar System's sun) -- the official US reaction would be outrage, followed by reassurances to the public that capitalism was still top dog. Then, after the US policy makers expressed outrage the USSR had done such a thing, the US would quickly try to learn how the USSR had done it, so they could do it themselves.

Maaaaan, those were *the* days.

On a similar note, remember how in the aftermath of WWII, the Nuremberg principles outlined the definition of war crimes in such a way that, ultimately, a war crime constituted any crime that Germany committed and the Allies didn't (so that for example, German commanders who orchestrated the firebombing of non-military, civilian concentrations and infrastructures--like London--were set free with American military defense testimony, because Britain and the U.S.

Re: I remember that joke.

[syndicalist]

Well, I don't have the whole text of the law of the Nuremberg Principles in front of me -- it's an off day, what can I say -- but, yeah, that was how they were implemented (victors' justice), but basically, like you imply, they are supposed to grant no country an exception:

"To initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

-- International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, 1946

My recollection is they state a soldier has not just the right, but a duty, to disobey illegal orders. Which means all the US soldiers in Iraq are essentially complicit in illegal actions, although the chief war criminals -- the kind who were hanged at Nuremberg -- are in the executive branch.

[ongildedwing]

I've read the NYT article. some of these things - "exploitation of wounds; induced illness" - just make my skin crawl.

New Guy Here

[mulukchuwen]

Fuck Guantamo Bay! A lot of these same techniques can be found in American prisons. The greatest exceptions are 4 & 5, which can be found in "corrupt" officers and whatnot. For number 1 thru 3 specifically, they call it "the hole". Some of the others I'm not sure about. They sounded more like a game of S&M. This strongly implies that the same prison system we pay taxes on was born right out of the USSR... Unless I've seen way too many prison movies. Somehow it's strikingly familiar already.