According to the NY Times (July 2, 2008), the CIA and the Pentagon lifted their use of waterboarding and other interrogation methods, that altogether amount to torture, from Chinese techniques used on American soldiers taken prisoner during the clashes over North Korea to elicit confessions from them. Some of the American soldiers had confessed under duress to participating in such things as gem warfare, a claim which the United States strongly denied at the time.
Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.
In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.
Soooo! The United States did not stop at importing cheap clothing, toys, electronic equipment from China… it embraced the whole enchilada. I guess pretty soon, we’ll hear Administration officials say before Congress and the Courts: “it’s not our fault, the Chinese made us do it… after all, they own the US government lock, stock and barrel.”
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