wednesday reads

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo (NYT)

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.

Milt Bearden: Truth Is Out on CIA and Torture


The president of Mongolia has declared a state of emergency after rioting sparked by allegations of election fraud left five dead, more than 300 injured and hundreds in detention.


SEOUL - It is going to be a long hot summer of mass protest, skyrocketing prices and diehard opposition to the conservative government of President Lee Myung-bak.


Crooked Timber: Blogs, Participation and Polarization


Brad Reed: A shorter version of our long national nightmare.


Tomgram: Rick Shenkman, American Stupidity


Trading sex for gas.