on torture, the usa is keeping good company

Lawyer and law professor Joseph Margulies has an interesting op-ed piece about torture in today's Washington Post. He points out that during the Korean War, the North Koreans tortured some 36 captured American pilots into "admitting" their role in a US plot to use bacteriological weapons against North Korean civilians. Two points make this relevant today.

1. The North Koreans used methods that the de facto Bush Administration approves for use in interrogations, such as stress positions (i.e., standing or sitting in uncomfortable positions for many hours), sleep deprivation, isolation, and marathon interrogation sessions. Margulies accurately calls this "touchless torture." The Administration says it isn't torture.

2. The 36 Americans confessed to a non-existent plot. In other words, they told the captors what the captors wanted to hear.

I imagine that 1950s North Korea, like the US today, denied that they tortured anybody. For the North Koreans, extracting false information satisfied their needs -- a propaganda coup "proving" the US was involved in attacks against civilians. They didn't need to use the confessions as the basis for further investigations or arrests or defensive programs.

The people (at all levels of the US government) charged with protecting us from terrorism are fools if they believe the confessions they are getting out of inmates in our torture chambers at Guantanamo, in Iraq, and elsewhere are accurate. And they are criminals if they are knowingly satisfied with false confessions.