Greetings, you're listening to podcast number 109 of Blast the Right.

I'm your host Jack Clark, great to have you here.

Today we'll revisit the troubling issue of the right wing's continuing obsession with torturing people.

And, in a departure from the usual, the second segment will be about, me, you'll learn what Jack Clark's real name is.

Huh? Stay tuned. Let's get right into it.

My sources for this segment are the Sunday Times of London, the 1948 United Nations War Crimes Commission, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper's Magazine, and Human Rights Watch.

Several months ago I showed you how the Bush administration's beloved enhanced interrogation techniques are actually repackaged Soviet Union interrogation techniques.

In recent days, the leading Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of John McCain, have been trying to outdo each other in bragging to what degree they would abuse prisoners they believe are terrorists.

In other words, how far their own administrations enhanced interrogation techniques will go.

So it's time to take a look at this issue again.

And what a bombshell piece of new information you're about to hear.

First, a recap of the Soviet Union connection.

During the Cold War, the United States conducted surveillance flights over the Soviet Union, and we had plenty of spies on the ground there.

We wanted to make sure that the airmen and others at great risk of being caught by the Soviets were prepared for the brutal interrogations they'd be forced to endure.

So the military set up a training program for our airmen and spies called survival, evasion, resistance, and escape, or seer.

What seer did was inflict upon the aviators and others the very types of interrogation methods the Soviets would use on them, such as sleep deprivation, extreme heat and cold, painful stress positions, and waterboarding.

Now, skip forward to the year 2002.

The CIA and Pentagon decide that the standard questioning techniques they're using.

Which were, of course, adequate during the Cold War for our questioning of Soviet spies, adequate during World War II for questioning prisoners from Nazi Germany and Tojo's Japan.

These standard interrogation techniques are somehow now not adequate for suspected terrorists in Bush's war on terror.

What had worked for decades in facing down Hitler and Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union had to be improved upon, so said the Bushians.

And what did they do?

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