That’s the original title of a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese interrogation tactics — a study that Guantanamo Bay interrogators lifted "verbatim" to use in their own coercive interrogation of terror suspects. The New York Times’  Scott Shane reports that these Chinese torture methods — used to extract often false confessions from U.S. soldiers in Korea — were applied between 2002-05 to get confessions out of Guantanamo detainees.

Shane’s revelation comes two weeks after the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) program, which was designed for captured U.S. troops facing torture but whose torture methods have been used by Guantanamo interrogators.

Shane’s finding — that a byzantine and ineffective program used by interrogators in 1950’s China was used by the Pentagon and CIA five years ago — is sure to further discredit the Bush administration’s "war on terror." But with Guantanamo still open, military commission trials on the docket, and no administration officials facing war crimes prosecution, Bush’s first declared war lives on.-MB

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