[The_Baron]

I took a course called, "Methods of Development of Viable Intelligence Product From Non-Allied HUMINT Resources." It was taught verbatim from the old School of the Americas curriculum guide. It specifically covered things like pulling toenails, using your vice-grips to crush teeth, electricity to the genitals, etc. The information was taught specifically to illustrate methods that are markedly less effective than simple sleep/sensory deprivation.
Where the idea come from that there needs to be a class taught on how to torture someone? The bible describes perfectly adequate methods of torture Anyone who's had a dentist start drilling before the anesthetic took effect is fully conversant with torture methods.
Where do you get your information on the SOTA curriculum? Are you an alumni? A former instructer? One of the Congressional members with oversight on the facility? Where exactly do you get the information on which you're basing your opinion?
As for being able to dispute it, I most certainly can dispute it. SOTA closed down in the mid 1990s. Nobody is teaching anyone there.
As for Noam Chomsky being a, " prominent intellectual." I'll agree he considers himself an intellectual. I'll agree that he's often heard spouting in any number of venues. He certainly has some sort of prominence among the tree-hugger crowd. Of course he also rides in a gas powered limousine when he travels to and from the airport where he flies on petroleum powered aircraft. That in and of itself tends to lead me to think there's a certain moral flexibility in his politics.
If he wants to consider the US a terrorist state, good for him. Let's have a brief mind experiment here. Let's imagine the United States suspends all of it's activities outside its own borders for a period of 90 days. Nothing to do with any of the geographical areas mr. Chomsky assures us that the US is attempting to control. We just shut down and do nothing.
What do you think the effects would be on the world as a whole? Chomsky is a hypocrite of the first water and the world has the misfortune in that he's found a ready source of believers of his prattle on the Internet.
His commentary on his impending imprisonment that was disrupted because of the Tet Offensive is particularly delicious. I wonder if he'd care to explain the train of causality that lead from violating the Tet ceasefire to his not being tried. Perhaps you could find some resource where he explains that?
As for the folks in Brighton being pepper sprayed for, "just sitting in the street." Yep, they were doing that. And they weren't getting up and moving when the police asked them to. They didn't get up and move when the police told them to do it. They didn't even do it when the police mentioned that they were going to be sprayed with capsicum resin and dragged off. Real bummer their eyes hurt for an hour or so. What about the people who wanted to use the street they were, "just sitting in?" Or do their needs somehow lose significance because somebody want's to protest the government's position?