Fear Up Harsh
Englishman in Moscow,Kazimir Malevich
But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul
--Hamlet, Shakespeare
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?
Have you left no sense of decency?
--Joseph Welch, Army-McCarthy Hearings
_______________
It has been almost two weeks since Scott Shane's New York Times article revealing the military's use of Chinese communist interrogation techniques on U.S.-held detainees (An Expert Reveals Chinaese Origins of Interrogations at Guantánamo), yet the response has been surprisingly weak.
Turns out an entire interrogation class at Guantanamo was based on a chart copied from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many false, from American prisoners.
We used to call these techniques torture, and the result, "brainwashing," but that was before the Phony War on Terror (PWOT©) unleashed this corrupt administration to corrode the better part of the USA's moral standing. This was either a deliberate hoax, or a nefarious misappropriation of materials, depending on where you stand on the charity scale.
The 1957 article by sociologist Albert D. Biderman which included the chart was titled, “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.” A close reading of the title is the giveaway that these are needless techniques, if you are after facts.
This is the perpetration of a monumental fraud along the lines of the "gentle Tasaday" of the Philippines, or Margaret Mead's credulous reportage of the aggressive Samoan women, but with more at stake than academic integrity.
The Roanoke Times wrote eloquently in "The Manchurian Interrogation Chart," this administration, "in the habit of shutting out unpleasant truths remains blind to this one: People being tortured eventually will say anything, true or not, to stop the torture."
Turns out an entire interrogation class at Guantanamo was based on a chart copied from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many false, from American prisoners.
We used to call these techniques torture, and the result, "brainwashing," but that was before the Phony War on Terror (PWOT©) unleashed this corrupt administration to corrode the better part of the USA's moral standing. This was either a deliberate hoax, or a nefarious misappropriation of materials, depending on where you stand on the charity scale.
The 1957 article by sociologist Albert D. Biderman which included the chart was titled, “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.” A close reading of the title is the giveaway that these are needless techniques, if you are after facts.
This is the perpetration of a monumental fraud along the lines of the "gentle Tasaday" of the Philippines, or Margaret Mead's credulous reportage of the aggressive Samoan women, but with more at stake than academic integrity.
The Roanoke Times wrote eloquently in "The Manchurian Interrogation Chart," this administration, "in the habit of shutting out unpleasant truths remains blind to this one: People being tortured eventually will say anything, true or not, to stop the torture."
"Proponents would hang the nation's security on that thin thread, and betray all that it is supposed to mean to be American."
Labels: chinese interrogation chart used at guantanamo, PWOT, torture chart used at gitmo to brainwash, wot
posted by Lisa at 4:15 PM
7 Comments:
First we see Israel act towards the Palestinians in ways some of their older citizens would recognize from days in Germany. Now, we see America copying the antics of our old enemies. Is there some cosmic rule I am trying not to acknowledge that really does say you are doomed to become that which you most fear and hate?
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.
hamlet
... if you are after facts ...
Ah, but that's the crux of the biscuit, ain't it?
Torture is a way to extract confessions, not facts. That's how the Chinese used it in Korea, and how the Vietnamese used it in Vietnam (to the extent they used torture -- they didn't start torture until they were sure they had already extracted all the facts they could extract). And how the KGB used it in the Soviet Union. Confessions.
So... if they aren't interested in facts at Gitmo, that must mean they already know the facts about who is behind the terror attacks upon America and where they are. Which means that what's going on in Afghanistan today is... uhm... what? A charade? A charade to keep American forces there for some geopolitical reason that we're not privy to?
And conversely, if they're interested only in confessions, not facts... does this mean they're looking for convenient scapegoats, rather than the people behind 9/11? And what does this say about those people who insist that Osama bin Laden was on the CIA payroll and that he'll never be caught because he has CIA protection?
All this makes a penguin's digestion rather uneasy...
- Badtux the Uneasy Penguin
badtux, intel has a shelf life.everything gathered after a few days is history not intel.I personally believe that OBL is alive and well in S.Arabia.it's not credible that the US can't find the antrax mailer OR obl- it just doesn't compute.But i try to keep away from speculation and conspiracy theory-my head spins enuf as it is. jim
I know what you mean. The whole reason for all these conspiracy theories is because the actions of the Busheviks just don't make sense in any real-world definition of the word "sense". Personally, I think they're too stupid to create a working conspiracy. But you must admit that all these odd things are, indeed, rather... odd.
Fixer,
Jah, mon -- that is indeed the biscuit around which this whole enchilada turns.
Labrys,
Makes one wonder about the whole eternal return idea. How do we get out of the cycle?
No one can take us there, despite what the Staples Singers say. Maybe we pop out of the repetition slowly and painfully, one person at a time.
MB,
thank you.
Post a Comment
<< Home