Links for April 10th

Reuters: China tells U.S. to quit as human rights judgeOne of the perils of the U.S.'s decade-old habit of engaging in torture is that we can't pretend to be outraged when other countries do the same. We're a role model. Wikipedia: Trailer (film)The MPAA caps the length of trailers at 2:30, though studios are allowed …

Conservative radio host surrenders after six seconds of waterboarding.

Professional asshole/radio host “Mancow” had himself waterboarded to prove that it’s not torture. He made it six seconds. It only required three quarters of a gallon for him to surrender. He said that it pained him to say it, but that it’s “absolutely torture,” and that he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known how …

Torture OK was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm.”

In yesterday’s New York Times, Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti reveal how top White House and congressional officials all came to agree that torture was legal in 2002: This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were …

We’re parroting China’s own POW torture techniques.

The U.S. military learned its torture techniques by imitating Chinese communist methods from the Korean War. And how did they learn about these methods? From a 1957 U.S. military study of how so many American POWs came to make false confessions. They even reused the original chart of techniques, changing only the title, “Communist Coercive …