The Pentagon appears to have flipped SERE’s teachings on their head

“The Pentagon appears to have flipped SERE’s teachings on their head, mining the program not for

resistance techniques but for interrogation methods. At a June 2004 briefing, the chief of the United

States Southern Command, Gen. James T. Hill, said a team from Guantanamo went “up to our SERE school

and developed a list of techniques” for “high-profile, high-value” detainees. General Hill had sent

this list – which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical

assault and the exploitation of detainees’ phobias – to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who

approved most of the tactics in December 2002.

Hat tip, Laura Rozen.

Gee, no wonder the Iraqi Communist Party is so enthusiastic about the American occupation — and was

even appointed by former viceroy Paul Bremer to the Governing Council. As I wrote two years ago:

“The Communists, like the Americans, believe that the way to transform society and achieve the

transition to true democracy is by establishing an ‘interim’ dictatorship: in the case of the former,

it’s the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” while the Americans call their dictatorship the ‘Iraqi

Interim Authority.’ But that’s just semantics. Both want to forcibly modernize and secularize a

deeply religious, consciously conservative society, and seek to ‘liberate’ women: both commies and

neocons see themselves as “progressive,” on the right side of history, and both have force at the

core of their methods.