It has now come to light that the detainee abuse in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan started when the Bush administration ordered our interrogators to use a document called: "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance."

This was a 1957 document that showed how the Chinese Communists tortured people -- in order to get false confessions! The only thing we changed was that we dropped the title of the document. Otherwise it is exactly the same. We have been using communist torture tactics that are designed to get false confessions. Meanwhile, The Bush administration has been calling it "enhanced interrogations" and saying we got "valuable intelligence" from it.

More details on the story here:




If you want to read the story of how we came to use this document for our own interrogations, you can click here. This is deplorable. Will anyone ever suffer the consequences for ordering this illegal torture? Will the press question John McCain on why he voted to allow the CIA to continue doing this? I wouldn't bank on it.

But if we do this, and no one ever gets punished for it, can we really say that America doesn't torture anymore?

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What conservatives don't understand is that America was not made in God's image. It was not born perfect. It is not and should not be immune to change. Challenging the government of America isn't un-American, it's the very definition of being American.

Through these challenges and these changes we continue to make America better and better. We are not the greatest country by birthright or accident of geography; we are the greatest because we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

So, when we do something as hideous as what I explain below, it is our duty as Americans to challenge our government and demand that they do better. We cannot allow them to do this in our name:




Here is the original 60 Minutes story on what we did to Murat Kurnaz. But his story is, unfortunately, not unique. We have done this to countless people at Bagram Air Base, Qaim, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. We are better than this. Don't let George Bush tell the rest of the world that this is what we are and what we stand for. We must defend the honor and good name of America, otherwise this is what we become.

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Well, that didn't last long. America complained "forcefully" to our government. Upset for being included on the Canadian torture watch list. Because the Canadian Government has no balls, the torture manual will be re-written with America's name removed. CBS News Reports....

The listing drew a sharp response from the U.S., a key NATO ally and trading partner, which asked to be removed from the manual.

"We find it to be offensive for us to be on the same list with countries like Iran and China. Quite frankly it's absurd," U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins told The Associated Press. "For us to be on a list like that is just ridiculous." He said the U.S. does not authorize or condone torture.

"We think it should be removed and we've made that request. We have voiced our opinion very forcefully," Wilkins said...Read More on CBSNews....

So there you have it, if you want to read this news from other sources they are starting to creep in on Google News. I don't have much to add, I just felt obligated to provide this follow up from last weeks posting about America being put on the Torture Watch List, I know torture talk upsets a lot of people in America and if I hurt any feelings, I apologize. Just wanted to pop by and remind you all, waterboarding was once torture.

The video today is a Fox News clip discussing Waterboarding.

From the NewsHounds.us archive.

*Post Updated: Jan 21st

This incredible post by Andrew Sullivan (conservative blogger who no longer supports the Bush administration) explains how the Germans used what they called "enhanced interrogation" in 1937. He explains how it took on a life of its own and turned into the nightmare that became Nazi Germany.

As he carefully explains in his post, this is not to say that present day America is the same as what Nazi Germany became. That would be a ridiculous statement. It is to say that we should be careful in heading down certain paths because they lead to terrible and ugly places -- and gain momentum as time goes on.

When I see people defending torture in this country under the guise of getting tough with "terrorists" ( the Germans also used the word "terrorists" to describe some of their enemies) and when I see the audience cheering in the Republican primary debates when the candidates talk about "enhanced interrogation," I get a chill down my spine (to be fair John McCain came out strongly against torture in that debate, it was Giuliani and Romney who seemed so eager to cozy up to "enhanced interrogation techniques").

Several emails have written me about my posting suggesting that the real Abu Ghraib scandal was not about torture but about sexual depravity. One reader asks, "Where can I find out more?

Clearly we have here a guy who wants to save himself $26.95 which is the retail price of my new book The Enemy at Home. Hey, haven't you heard of online purchasing at 30 percent off? Anyway, I recently published a column on Townhall.com in which I lay out the facts of the Abu Ghraib story.

You can read it here. And if you agree that this is the kind of fresh, original material that you aren't seeing anywhere else, go ahead and order The Enemy at Home.

Last week HBO featured a full-length expose of Abu Ghraib, the umpteenth such expose on American television. Rory Kennedy's film "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib," aired on February 22, 2007, portrayed the scandal as one involving prisoner abuse, torture, and lack of accountability on the part of the government. The usual story.

But this is not what the Abu Ghraib scandal was really about. The HBO portrait of Abu Ghraib more accurately characterizes the prison as it functioned during the rule of Saddam Hussein. For years Abu Ghraib was one of Saddam's most notorious prisons. Tens of thousands of people were held there and many were subject to indescribable beatings and abuse. Torture was routinely used to obtain confessions and information. Twice a week there were hangings outside the prison. During this period, Americans heard virtually nothing about Abu Ghraib.

Abu Ghraib only became associated with scandal in 2004 with the publication of riveting pictures showing an Iraqi man on a leash, naked Iraqi prisoners stacked into a human pyramid, a hooded man with his arms outstretched, a prisoner with wires attached to his limbs. Suddenly the New York Times became interested, since American culpability was involved. Others on the left jumped on the story, and they have been using it ever since to embarass the Bush administration. Meanwhile, some conservatives like Rush Limbaugh defended Abu Ghraib as a legitimate way to get valuable information from terrorists.