Awww, isn't this cute: a videoblog post in which new ABC News co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas, who's in Iraq, watches Iraqi commandos learn jiujitsu moves and learns some of the tricks they're being taught:

Today in our second day in Baghdad we spent a lot of time watching the Iraqi police commando units training, getting ready to take over for security here in Iraq. These commando units have been really controversial. A lot of Iraqis here have said that they are bullies, and they're sort of gangs that are roving around the city....

We saw the Iraqi forces learning all sorts of different tactics, wrestling tactics, to help maneuver suspects. I learned how to apply a choke hold -- a blood choke, it's called. It's supposed to render someone unconscious within five seconds. I can tell you, having had it done to me for one second, it's extremely uncomfortable, but maybe it'll come in handy, I don't know, knowing that, someday, in advance...

As Vargas notes in a separate story, the commando unit in question is the Wolf Brigade:

Gen. Rasheed Mohammed, the Wolf Brigade's commander, says his unit is effective and, at times, brutal.

"We don't have eavesdropping or electronic monitoring," he said. "And sometimes we have to be aggressive to come up with a confession from a detainee. Of course, you should not torture."....

Oh, yes, of course:

... The men described to the lawyer how they suffered systematic torture for 27 days while being held by the Wolf Brigade in a Ministry of Interior building in the district of al-Ziyouna in Baghdad. They claimed that they were beaten with cables, received electric shocks to the hands, wrists, fingers, ankles and feet, received cigarette burns to the face, and were left in a room with water on the floor while an electric current was applied to the water. The men signed confessions claiming responsibility for five other bomb attacks in other districts of Baghdad. However, when the lawyer investigated these five alleged bomb attacks at police stations, he obtained documents showing that these attacks never actually took place....

Of course you should not torture:

...She said the elite Interior Ministry force known as the Wolf Brigade arrested her....

After she had spent 11 days in solitary confinement, two men appeared at her cell door, blindfolded her and dragged her away. "Shut up! We will tear you to pieces and throw you in the river if you utter a word," she claims they said.

She was taken to a room where interrogators confronted her with a man she says she had never met before. The man said he had sex with her and that she gave him money and explosives to attack Americans.

"How can you say such things?" she asked him when the officials weren't looking. He raised his pants and showed her blood running down his legs, she claimed. "I knew he said this because he was tortured."

She was then blindfolded again, handcuffed and gagged as about six men whipped her with electric cables for 15 minutes, she said....

It was very shrewd of the U.S. to spoon-feed this little martial-arts demonstration to Vargas. Anyone who watched the story on last night's news or who sees it on the Net will hear about "brutal tactics" on the part of the commandos and think, "Oh -- choke holds that temporarily knock you out. That's not brutal -- that's just tough. Why are the liberals whining?" Lots of Americans already hear "torture" in reference to Abu Ghraib and other prisons and think, "Torture? Naked monkey piles? That's just a college fraternity prank." The same propaganda principle applies here.

Vargas says "brutal" and "bullies," but she never mentions the allegations of unambiguous torture cited above -- nor does she note that the Wolf Brigade and other commando units have been linked to extrajudicial executions, perhaps including that of Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi journalist who was murdered shortly after he coauthored this Knight Ridder story that mentioned the Wolf Brigade in the context of revenge killings. Given the standards of TV journalism today, you wonder: Does Vargas even know about these things? Does she know anything about the commando units apart from what she learned, probably, in a brief cram session just before doing this report?