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Jason Leopold of Truthout: Exclusive Report on the Origins of John Yoo’s Torture Memo

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Investigative reporter Jason Leopold on his latest exclusive, co-written with Dr. Jeffrey Kaye, exposing the anti-torture training manual that was the basis of many BushCo torture techniques.Leopold provides important details about the memos that authorized torture–and that they were written after the first torture practices like the waterboarding of Abu Zubayda actually occurred.  Follow the link to the article, which links to the Pentagon website and the blandly-titled manual, “Pre-Academic Laboratory Operating Instructions”.  The 37-page manual was intended to train US soldiers to resist torture, and instead served as a blueprint for the procedures that a military intelligence officer calls  “the guidebook for false confessions…used to generate propaganda, not intelligence”.  We cover many aspects of the manual, and its perverted use by Americans who lecture other countries on human rights abuses. We also talk about the newly-released memo from Philip Zelikow which attempts to scrub the record of his boss, Condoleeza Rice, on the legality of the torture policies she approved.  And Leopold notes that he and Jeff Kaye stumbled on the manual at the Pentagon’s online reading room; it was released on a FOIA request from McClatchy Newspapers, but they have yet to report on it.