While recxjake discusses Obama's mortgage loan, this trivial piece of news flares up:

[Direckshun]

The Bush administration actively borrowed (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss) some of their enhanced interrogation techniques from communist China:

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 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.
So this is a bizarre-ass story.

And it's consumed the blogging world today, with comments from The Moderate Voice (http://themoderatevoice.com/war/war-on-terror/gwot/20768/what-i-tell-you-is-three-times-true-other-dispatches-on-the-bush-terror-regime/), the Carpetbagger Report (http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16065.html), Sullivan (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/07/how-conservatis.html) and Yglesias (http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/torture_works_for_its_intended.php), etc. (http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/07/1957-chinese-torture-to-elicit-false.html) etc. (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_07/014018.php) etc. (http://thetalkingdog.com/archives2/001110.html) etc. (http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2008_06_29.html#008966) etc. (http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=10753) etc. (http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2008/07/02/makeit****ingstopplease/) etc. (http://www.mahablog.com/2008/07/02/shame-2/)

But no right wing bloggers.

Instead, the right wing bloggers have taken Jake's lead and thought the bigger story was Obama's mortgage loan. Not (http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/07/obama_got_a_sweet_deal_on_his.php) even (http://www.redstate.com/stories/elections/2008/obamas_countrywide_like_sweetheart_mortgage_deal) kidding (http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/267790.php).

You hear what we want you to hear, children.

[Adept Havelock]

Nice to know we're getting tips from the real experts. :shake:

I wonder if we'll get leak-plugging info from the GRU?

[Taco John]

Just imagine... All this time, folks have been defending the interrogation techniques of Communist China. Do you think that it even makes them wince to realize it?

I'm certain it doesn't. But you'd think it might. Even Kotter, at some point, felt betrayed by his messiah, Clinton.

[patteeu]

1) The logical flaw in the argument here. Just because the Communist Chinese did something doesn't mean it's bad for us to do it.

For example, the Communist Chinese use jails to incarcerate criminals, but that doesn't mean that the use of jails to incarcerate criminals is inherently wrong.

2) Similarly, just because we condemned it when the Chinese did it to us, doesn't mean we ought to be condemned.

The Chinese signed on to the Geneva Conventions well before the Korean War. These interrogation techniques are violations of the GC as it pertains to uniformed military personnel like the US GIs who were subjected to this treatment during that war. The enemy combatants taken in Afghanistan and held in Gitmo do not qualify for POW treatment like those GIs did and our administration's position (until the recent SCOTUS ruling) was that none of the rest of the GC applied either. IMO, the SCOTUS was wrong, but the Bush administration, reasonably, appears to be treating their ruling as the operative law of the land now.

[Hog Farmer]

Yeah, but we invented waterboarding. And people pyramids.

[BucEyedPea]

Yeah, but we invented waterboarding. And people pyramids.

The navy used to call it water torture though. I guess it's like panics, depressions, recessions and soft landings when the subject is economics. LMAO

[StcChief]

but the Bush Administration is NOT immune to "ex post facto" legislation from the Left.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law

in the court of public opinion they are attempting to sway.

[jAZ]

1) The logical flaw in the argument here. Just because the Communist Chinese did something doesn't mean it's bad for us to do it.

For example, the Communist Chinese use jails to incarcerate criminals, but that doesn't mean that the use of jails to incarcerate criminals is inherently wrong.
Yes, because eliciting false confessions is good for EVERYBODY!!!

[patteeu]

Yes, because eliciting false confessions is good for EVERYBODY!!!

We don't use these techniques to draw out confessions. That's another distinction that the article fails to explain.

[chiefforlife]

Patteeu, you are now defending communist torture techniques? Is there nothing you wouldnt defend for the Bush administration?

[chiefforlife]

We don't use these techniques to draw out confessions. That's another distinction that the article fails to explain.

So its OK to torture if you arent trying to get a confession? Why would that make any difference?

[Pittsie]

"Operationally, the torture story has already had a chilling effect in keeping CIA officers off the streets and out of the back alleys of a dangerous world. There is a deep and realistic concern that they could be captured and tortured themselves."

"Old hands will recall the case of the CIA Beirut station chief, William Buckley, taken hostage in Beirut in 1984 by Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad, and held until his death there in 1985. An operational assignment to Beirut after the Buckley affair was a personal security nightmare -- but the heightened concerns were limited to that rough neighborhood. CIA officers could still do abroad what they did best -- move around and understand, perhaps as well as any, the lay of the land."

"Today, for CIA officers, and literally all U.S. officials abroad, much of the world resembles Beirut in the mid-1980s. A look at any U.S. embassy must be through crash barriers and razor wire. These serve not only to keep America’s adversaries out, but to keep American officers in, crippling the intelligence and any foreign-policy missions at the worst possible time."

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/the-truth-is-out-on

[patteeu]

Patteeu, you are now defending communist torture techniques? Is there nothing you wouldnt defend for the Bush administration?

No. I'm defending a subset of the interrogation techniques that Communist China has used.

You probably think it's OK to ask prisoners questions. Did you realize that the Communist Chinese also ask prisoners questions?

[Taco John]

It's not a bad argument I suppose...

"Yes I'm using a pedophile cookbook! Just because they like to rape kids doesn't mean that they aren't good at cooking!"

Afterall, cooking has nothing to do with raping kids.

[patteeu]

So its OK to torture if you arent trying to get a confession? Why would that make any difference?

We're not talking about torture here, but the answer to your question is yes, it does make a difference. If I'm using rough tactics to get you to confess to a crime you didn't commit, you may well make a false confession just to make the unpleasantness stop. If I'm using rough tactics to get you to give up the combination to the safe that is right next to us, it won't do you any good to give me a false combination because I'll be able to verify it in short order and you won't get the relief that you seek.

[bango]

It's not a bad argument I suppose...

"Yes I'm using a pedophile cookbook! Just because they like to rape kids doesn't mean that they aren't good at cooking!"

Afterall, cooking has nothing to do with raping kids.

This has to be one of the best analogies that I have ever heard.

[Mr. Kotter]

:whackit:

[banyon]

:whackit:

Are you drunk?

[Mr. Kotter]

Are you drunk?

No. :shrug:

Should I be??? :hmmm:

[patteeu]

This has to be one of the best analogies that I have ever heard.

It is a good analogy. And if the best recipe you've ever tasted for Chicken Marsala happened to be in a cookbook found at the home of a convicted pedophile and published on the internet, there wouldn't be any reason not to copy it and add it to your recipe collection. When judging a recipe, you ought to base your evaluation on how good the finished dish tastes, how healthy it is for you, how easy it is to make, or any of a number of cooking-related criteria. Judging it by who wrote it or who happened to have it in their recipe collection would be strange.

[Dr. Van Halen]

It is a good analogy. And if the best recipe you've ever tasted for Chicken Marsala happened to be in a cookbook found at the home of a convicted pedophile and published on the internet, there wouldn't be any reason not to copy it and add it to your recipe collection. When judging a recipe, you ought to base your evaluation on how good the finished dish tastes, how healthy it is for you, how easy it is to make, or any of a number of cooking-related criteria. Judging it by who wrote it or who happened to have it in their recipe collection would be strange.

Nonetheless, I think most Americans want Hitler Stew left off their menus.

[patteeu]

Nonetheless, I think most Americans want Hitler Stew left off their menus.

I'm not a big fan of stew either so I can relate to that.

When it comes to our government and their duty to provide national security though, I'd prefer that they approach the job rationally rather than emotionally.