Yes, We Did Execute Japanese Soldiers for Waterboarding American POWs

[cascadiance]

23. For torture in Vietnam, it's worth studying the "Vietnam Project" and Stan Sheinbaum...

Rent the documentary "Citizen Stan" to see how he started his prolific life that was a part of things like the Pentagon Papers, working for the welfare of Greek imprisoned leader Papandreou, the Israeli and Yasser Arafat summit, and the L.A. riots after Rodney King, etc.

http://www.citizenstan.com/

But Sheinbaum started leading the Vietnam project at Michigan State University, which was infiltrated by the CIA, so that members of the project were helping train the South Vietnamese to torture the Viet Cong. A Ramparts article which Sheinbaum wrote in after he left the project documents this earlier in the 60's.

http://www.namebase.org/campus/msu.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stanley-k-sheinbaum/vietnam-project-michigan-state-university_b_1973274.html

Duped by the CIA

...

"CIA? What CIA people?"

He seemed perplexed. "The ones on the fifth floor, Professor Sheinbaum."

It became clear to me after a few more discreet, and not-so-discreet, probing interviews that the "policing" part of the project in Vietnam proper was being run by the CIA, and that they were dealing in counter-insurgency, torture, intimidation of the populace, police undercover infiltration of Buddhist organizations and government control of the media and pro-government propaganda. I was shocked. We were a cover for the United States government to prop up an anti-democratic South Vietnamese regime.

Okay, keeping it real, at that time in my life I honestly might have been able to accept some of that activity "to stop the Communist threat," but I could not come to terms with the fact that our supposedly college-administered aid project was working secretly with the CIA to create and manage a puppet government under the cover of Michigan State University. This seemed to me to be against the very principles we were supposed to be promoting.

...

After Sheinbaum had left the project and the Vietnam Project was shut down, MSU kept their USAID efforts going in Southeast Asia, and my dad took us over there at that time working for them, and I didn't know about this history until much later when I saw that documentary. I've even had a phone conversation on this with Mr. Sheinbaum in recent years.

And note in these articles that after this project and our living over their too, MSU president John Hannah was "rewarded" with being made head of USAID in those days, so underhanded political favors happened then too.