China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

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....

NYT, still churning it out.

The interrogation methods used at Guantánamo are compared directly to those purportedly used by the Chinese Communists back in the 1950’s. Some of the techniques used by ChiCom captors from that era may have been applied, but by no means the ENTIRE range of specialized “persuasive” methods. Nothing is said, of course, about the more rugged and invasive tactics used by the ChiComs, including forced postures for hours, confinement in intolerable conditions, actual breaking of bones and disfigurement of bodily parts, or public humiliation before the faces of fellow prisoners.

None of the latter have been officially condoned by the US command structure, and those isolated incidents where this has occurred, has been because somebody greatly exceeded their authority.

There are no new or original methods known to mankind that will compel the compliance of a reluctant prisoner, that involve only the long conversations and interviews so favored by the “humane” critics of current policy.

A couple of opposing notions are at work here. A soldier representing our side, we would not like for him to give up information too easily, just as a result of such a lengthy interview. The same soldier may be forgiven, if due to extreme methods of interrogation or forced obedience being applied, that left both arms permanentely deformed and physical scars elsewhere on the body, yet returns to the home nation.

On the other hand, the prisoners that OUR side captures, being extremely reticent about sharing what they know, which could potentially explain a lot of the enemy’s motivation, and possibly prevent additional assaults in the future, should be treated with “kid gloves”. OK, but only if there is an iron fist within, and that implies that the enemy prisoner fully understands that we shall go to whatever lengths necessary to collect the essential knowledge, and that as prisoner, he HAS no rights. Not one.

Them’s the rules. Like them or not, inevitably, the side that eventually prevails has to apply them. While that does not mean that the side that succumbs did NOT apply the same standards, they still had to make some similar effort.

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