# How to torture like a Commie **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2008, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026 "2008-07-02T10:10:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/1 "2008-07-02T10:10:28Z")
[Turns out that’s what we’ve been doing at Gitmo](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin), and presumably elsewhere in the American gulag from Bagram through Abu Ghraib to those mysterious Eastern European holding locations and prison ships: > [@](#): > > 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. > > The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency. I’m old enough to have grown up on tales of brave Americans heroically withstanding such techniques. It was clear from those tales just who the good guys and bad guys were, and why. Still is. They closed that sale with me when I was a kid, and this is one of those areas where I’ve never had reason to question the values that were inculcated into me in childhood. So pardon me if my sympathies lie with the captives at Gitmo and Bagram and elsewhere, rather than with their captors who are supposedly trying to keep me safe. I was raised to know right from wrong, and to believe that America was on the side of right. It is the captors who are trying to keep me safe who are unAmerican. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/2 "2008-07-02T10:20:20Z")
What’s great is that some of the prisoners at Gitmo were apparently Chinese citizens opposed to the government of China. They had fled China and ended up not only imprisoned for years, but also treated to the exact same techniques the Chinese would have used on them. [Link](http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4894921&page=1). I just can’t believe what we have become in the past 8 years. ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/3 "2008-07-02T12:59:58Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] [Turns out that’s what we’ve been doing at Gitmo](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin), and presumably elsewhere in the American gulag from Bagram through Abu Ghraib to those mysterious Eastern European holding locations and prison ships: I’m old enough to have grown up on tales of brave Americans heroically withstanding such techniques. It was clear from those tales just who the good guys and bad guys were, and why. Still is. They closed that sale with me when I was a kid, and this is one of those areas where I’ve never had reason to question the values that were inculcated into me in childhood. So pardon me if my sympathies lie with the captives at Gitmo and Bagram and elsewhere, rather than with their captors who are supposedly trying to keep me safe. I was raised to know right from wrong, and to believe that America was on the side of right. It is the captors who are trying to keep me safe who are unAmerican. [/QUOTE] On your side here **Rufus T.** ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Dave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/46a35a/32.png) [@Great\_Dave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Dave)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/4 "2008-07-02T13:57:42Z")
How much more evidence do we need to get GWB et al tried for war crimes? ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/5 "2008-07-02T14:02:39Z")
It’s not the past eight years. There was a KGB agent who defected just around when Kennedy was assassinated. Due to fears it was Moscow that had him killed, he was tortured for about three years. Name of Nosenko. > **[Yuri Nosenko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko)** > > Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko (Russian: Юрий Иванович Носенко; Ukrainian: Юрій Іванович Носенко; October 30, 1927 – August 23, 2008) was a KGB officer who ostensibly defected to the United States in 1964. Controversy arose as to whether or not he was a KGB "plant," and he was held in detention by the CIA for over three years before he was finally accepted as a true defector. After his release he became an American citizen and worked as a consultant and a lecturer for the CIA. > Nosenko was allegedly born... See the Family Jewels document of '73 to see what’s been going on. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/6 "2008-07-02T14:02:40Z")
Not exactly breaking news – see [_Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy,_](http://www.amazon.com/Takeover-Imperial-Presidency-Subversion-Democracy/dp/0316118044) by Charlie Savage, Chapter 9, “The Torture Ban.” The no-visible-marks-left psychological torture methods – sleep deprivation, loud noises all night, heat and cold, shackling in stressed positions, threatening with dogs, defiling Korans, etc. – that our military has been documented as using on prisoners, e.g., at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, originally were invented by the North Koreans, and were successful in getting American POWs to appear in films **falsely** confessing to war crimes. U.S. interrogation experts (psychologists) studied it and determined the process is useless for any purpose but the production of false propaganda; no reliable information can be extracted, only what the subject thinks the interrogator wants to hear. But the authorities appear to have lost sight of that distinction. The methods were used in the [SERE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SERE) (Survive, Evade, Resist, and Escape) program, in which American special forces personnel were put through such psychological torture, solely to train them to resist it if captured. After 9/11, NCOs who had played the part of foreign interrogators in such simulations (but who were not psychologists or interrogation specialists) were put in charge of **real** interrogations and expected to get reliable information from prisoners, and for the most part they didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/7 "2008-07-02T14:12:02Z")
I don’t care whether or not it’s breaking news. If there isn’t national outrage and uproar about this, then it hasn’t broken far enough, dammit! ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/8 "2008-07-02T16:17:07Z")
[QUOTE=Great Dave] How much more evidence do we need to get GWB et al tried for war crimes? [/QUOTE] “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.” As far as war crimes, there is a long tradition of the victors granting themselves immunity against such. See the firebombing of Japanese cities as an example. Curiously (or perhaps not) laws and ethical standards are almost always something for the other guy to obey. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/9 "2008-07-02T17:25:30Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] As far as war crimes, there is a long tradition of the victors granting themselves immunity against such. See the firebombing of Japanese cities as an example. [/QUOTE] Yes. Even Robert McNamara, who as an officer with the Army’s Office of Statistical Control during WWII was one of the people involved in analyzing and perfecting LeMay’s bombing of Japan, said that if the US had lost, the people behind the bombing would have been tried as war criminals. ETA: My cite is the excellent and disturbing documentary _Fog of War_ ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/10 "2008-07-02T17:57:28Z")
[QUOTE=Bayard] Yes. Even Robert McNamara, who as an officer with the Army’s Office of Statistical Control during WWII was one of the people involved in analyzing and perfecting LeMay’s bombing of Japan, said that if the US had lost, the people behind the bombing would have been tried as war criminals. ETA: My cite is the excellent and disturbing documentary _Fog of War_ [/QUOTE] “LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he’s right. He… and I’d say I… were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side has lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” – _The Fog of War: 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara_ Notwithstanding that, the United States repeated and even exceeded those campaigns (in sheer tonnage of ordnance dropped, if not casualties per ton or other equivalent metrics of the efficacy of destruction) in the Vietnam, and later Cambodian and Laos bombing campaigns. As Secretary of Defense, McNamara oversaw and approved of the bombing campaigns during the Johnson years, and while he had personal doubts about the morality and effectiveness of the campaigns, he was in public a vigorous supporter of their need. In the more recent Errol Morris documentary, _Standard Operating Procedure_, he interviews a number of people involved with or present at the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal. The one professional (contract) interrogator that was there looked at the Army personnel performing “interrogations” with contempt, both in how they exceeded any kind of professional ethics for treating prisoners and for the complete lack of effectiveness of the techniques in obtaining useful information. As **BrainGlutton** notes, these techniques and those that proceeded them are really intended to extract confessions (valid or otherwise) from subjects rather than glean factual information. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/11 "2008-07-02T19:20:21Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.” Stranger [/QUOTE] Plus we have political commissars, in Justice, Iraq, and elsewhere, making scientific and hiring decisions based on party loyalty. Smells like a Commie rat to me. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/12 "2008-07-02T19:38:49Z")
This latest bit of news (not that it’s exactly new news) had me literally shaking with rage this morning. These torture methods weren’t invented by the North Koreans, they were SOP in the Soviet Union, just read “The Gulag Archipeligo”. I’m not naive enough to believe that torture never happened in the past. American troops and American agents have used torture. But the unmitigated stupidity of the Bush administration in believing the could make torture SOP and not have that information become public…well, it’s just mind-boggling. We’ve known that the use of torture was widespread, and we’ve known it for several years. But the sheer evil of literally using totalitarian communist torture techniques as a guidebook? And not just sheer evil, but sheer misguided evil? Misguided for about two or three dozen reasons. Didn’t anyone in the fucking Bush administration think for a moment about whether it was a good idea to literally follow Stalin’s blueprint for torture? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/13 "2008-07-02T19:52:13Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] …But the unmitigated stupidity of the Bush administration in believing the could make torture SOP and not have that information become public…well, it’s just mind-boggling… [/QUOTE] Of course they knew. They expected us to _approve_, they expected to exploit the 9/11 hysteria unto the seventh generation. Point of fact, many of us do. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/14 "2008-07-02T20:05:30Z")
I understand that the Chin Com’s also used more subtle means, like a curvaceous, buxom Chinese woman. In rare circumstances, both of them. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/15 "2008-07-02T20:10:36Z")
This news, while unsurprising, is nonetheless appalling. We have, in fighting monsters, apparently become them. Heads must roll when the next President takes office. ---
**Author:** ![3waygeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/e95f7d/32.png) [@3waygeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3waygeek)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/16 "2008-07-02T22:44:21Z")
Hey, we get everything else from China; why not torture techniques? ---
**Author:** ![Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea666f/32.png) [@Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/17 "2008-07-02T23:52:24Z")
[QUOTE=Bayard] Yes. Even Robert McNamara, who as an officer with the Army’s Office of Statistical Control during WWII was one of the people involved in analyzing and perfecting LeMay’s bombing of Japan, said that if the US had lost, the people behind the bombing would have been tried as war criminals. ETA: My cite is the excellent and disturbing documentary _Fog of War_ [/QUOTE] Here is the quote: > [@McNamara](#): > > LeMay said, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win? ---
**Author:** ![Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea666f/32.png) [@Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2008, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/18 "2008-07-02T23:57:40Z")
It has not been established that these techniques are torture. Just because the US used the term torture in regard to these methods in the past, it does not mean that they reach the legal standard of torture. I think you should hold off making these pronouncements until a full investigation is completed along with appropriate legal proceeding where the legal issues can be hashed out. We are a nation of laws, not men (and their opinions). ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2008, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/19 "2008-07-03T00:00:46Z")
[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun] It has not been established that these techniques are torture. Just because the US used the term torture in regard to these methods in the past, it does not mean that they reach the legal standard of torture. I think you should hold off making these pronouncements until a full investigation is completed along with appropriate legal proceeding where the legal issues can be hashed out. We are a nation of laws, not men (and their opinions). [/QUOTE] Have you no shame? ---
**Author:** ![Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea666f/32.png) [@Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2008, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026/20 "2008-07-03T00:06:25Z")
[QUOTE=Frank] Have you no shame? [/QUOTE] I am sorry you think I should be ashamed just because I do not _assume_ that crimes have been committed before a full investigation has been concluded, not to mention a trial. Maybe we should just assume that anyone accused of a crime actually committed that crime. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-torture-like-a-commie/455026.md?page=2)