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Growing up as a young "National Review" reading conservative- I was exposed to quite a bit of anti Soviet and anti communist tracts and authors. I feasted on authors that chronicled the crimes of Lenin and Stalin- guys like Robert Conquest and Alex De Jong and Solzhenitsyn.
I became quite familiar with Soviet torture techniques. And sleep deprivation was the central torture used to elicit confessions during the "Great Terror" of the 1930's. The "Right" had no problem calling such techniques torture back during the cold war.
I am struck by how similar the US government's language in reference to torture is to the Soviet government's under Stalin. Same sort of bureaucratic language. Same sort of abuse of definitions and terms.
The Soviet NKVD and later KGB had "Rules" for torture as well. Lists of "acceptable" techniques, lines that shouldn't be crossed, even the number of slaps that a suspect could get in one session. Theoretically the interrogators could be punished for crossing these lines but needless to say they seldom were as the whole process was subject to almost no scrutiny.
There is one big difference though, the Soviet government would never have dreamed to discuss these techniques in public. They were quite aware that what they were doing was criminally evil and something that had to be hidden, something that was shameful.
But we openly discuss this stuff. But we are actually having "Debates" about what should be indefensible. It speaks volumes about how sick we are as a society.
And as an aside- torture in Stalinist Russia was the engine that drove the "Great Terror". Without torture- there would have be no confessions naming more and more people as part of these imaginary "anti Soviet" conspiracies. Torture was vital is sustaining the terror.
That should be kept in mind in regard to why our government is so insistent on torture for "WOT" suspects. Without such tortures- how real would "Al Qaeda" be? They need to torture to keep the "Threat" alive and this is done by continual torture to ever expand the nature and scope of it- to keep our headlines filled with plots uncovered and conspiracies foiled.
