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Here’s something neat that you can read in preparation for your inevitable incarceration in Guantanamo Bay—a U.S. Government-funded manual on psychological torture, published in 1961 by John Wiley & Sons.*

It begins with “don’t try this at home” reassurances:

This work might help the armed forces to offset the lack of knowledge that was in part held responsible for much of the success Communist captors achieved in interrogation of United States prisoners of war in Korea (64). Its value for this purpose is limited in that it assumes an interrogator who pursues his objective of developing information rationally. Past experience indicates that practices encountered by prisoners of war are not determined exclusively by considerations of logic (5). A rational examination of the problem cannot lead to predictions of a nonrational opponent’s actions. Historically, there has been frequent resort to coercive practices for eliciting information, despite abundant evidence that such measures are relatively ineffective. Some estimates of what an opponent is likely to do, in addition to those based on considerations of what it will be feasible and advantageous for him to do, are required in devising measures for thwarting enemy exploitation attempts against prisoners of war.

Basically—this is what the Commies did; we’re just trying to guard against it. I’ll let Fred Clark explain why this isn’t very convincing:

During the Cold War, American spies and soldiers who were captured by the Soviet Union or its proxies were subjected to physical and psychological torture. America began studying the KGB’s interrogation methods for the same reasons that firefighters study fires: to learn how to fight against it, and how to survive when fighting against it. This study produced what became America’s SERE training. That stood for “survive, evade, resist, escape.” Training Americans to understand KGB torture so that they would be better able to survive, evade, resist or escape it was as rational and prudent a step as training firefighters to understand fire for all the same reasons.

But as America’s understanding of these KGB methods grew, U.S. military and intelligence agencies began to attract and produce their own version of firebugs in uniform. Unlike the fire departments, who try to filter out these madmen, the CIA institutionalized their efforts. Historian Alfred McCoy describes how, almost from its inception, the CIA’s SERE training was also perverse-engineered to provide training in how to adopt, conduct and inflict KGB-style interrogations. (A longer version of McCoy’s essay is here, at Tomgram. For primary sources and complete documentation, see “Prisoner Abuse: Patterns from the Past” from the National Security Archive.)

Anyway, the 1961 book is a blueprint for current human rights violations. Check out some of the chapter titles: “Effects of Disturbed Bodily Functions Upon Brain Function,” “The Effects of Reduced Environmental Stimulation on Human Behavior: A Review,” “Length of Stay in Experimental Isolation and Time Perception,” and keep this book in mind next time you encounter someone who thinks that what they did to Jose Padilla wasn’t a big deal.

* Probably best known for their For Dummies series.