Skip Navigation

The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

When Do Americans Copy Communists?

By The Daily Dish
Apr 22 2009, 7:51 AM ET

Waterboard3-small

When they are Bush administration officials:

Interrogators had produced false confessions from captured American pilots not with some kind of sinister “brainwashing” but with crude tactics: shackling the Americans to force them to stand for hours, keeping them in cold cells, disrupting their sleep and limiting access to food and hygiene.

“The Communists do not look upon these assaults as ‘torture,’ ” one 1956 study concluded. “But all of them produce great discomfort, and lead to serious disturbances of many bodily processes; there is no reason to differentiate them from any other form of torture.”

Worse, the study found that under such abusive treatment, a prisoner became “malleable and suggestible, and in some instances he may confabulate.”



Presented by

More at The Atlantic

Michigan: A Firewall for Romney—or the Bonfire of His Hopes? The Michigan Primary Will Decide the Fate of the GOP Race
The Many Questions Surrounding Walmart's 'Great for You' Initiative Does Walmart Really Want What's Great For You?
A Neuroscientist Debunks the Myth of Musical Instinct A Neuroscientist Debunks the Myth of Musical Instinct
The 'Wow!' Signal: One Man's Search for SETI's Most Tantalizing Trace of Alien Life The 'Wow!' Moment in Our Search for Aliens
Rick Santorum Wants Your Sex Life to Be 'Special' Rick Santorum Wants Your Sex Life to Be 'Special'
Special Report
The Next Global Economies Reuters The Next Global Economies
Lessons from the BRICs — and a look at which developing countries are on the rise. Read more ›
View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

World Press Photo Contest 2012

Feb 15, 2012

Subscribe Now

SAVE 59%! 10 issues JUST $2.45 PER COPY

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)