Many thanks to Cookie Jill from Skippy’s (y/sctp) bit of the outback for this:
if waterboarding isn't torture... according to the wall street journal and bushco, why then was waterboarding one of the "tortures" cited in convicting the japanese for war crimes committed during ww2?so...is waterboarding torture?
interestingly, the united states has long since answered that question. following the end of the second world war we prosecuted a number of japanese military and civilian officials for war crimes. including the torture of captured allied personnel. at one of those trials, united states v. sawada, here’s how captain chase nielsen, a crew member in the 1942 doolittle raid on japan, described his treatment, when he was captured,
It’s worth reading the rest.
We suppose if you’re a Republican legal precedent only counts when you want it to.
Comments
Lurch, it's a sign of how far we've fallen under the present administration that we're discussing this at all.
I agree, Mike. After Viet Nam I was posted to USAREUR, and worked in a rather unusual mutil-purpose shop outside of Bonn, somewhere. One of the local contractors who taught me a lot of what Germany was like in those days was in the Gehlen Bureau, and we/ve kind of stayed in touch, so to speak. I heard from him some weeks ago and the sarcasm he has treated me too is really unbearable. It's not nice to be laughed at by an 89 year old man. I thank whatever deity you want to pick that I never had a friend in GRU.
Okay, let's conceed that , behind closed doors in their executive bathrooms, the Bush-Cheney neocon corporate cronies and apologists piss daily on the remains of the Christian morality they see as nothing more than a wedge issue to win elections. Would Jesus waterboard? That's besides the point for them. These Christian soldiers tell us their noble ends (or ignoble as the case may be) justify the means. Will it work? They know it doesn't. The Khmer Rouge didn't use waterboarding to extract information because like our own govenrment, they knew torture-extracted information is unreliable and worthless. They only used it to get phony confessions and TERRORIZE any possible oponents into passive compliance.
Now, does that really work? Well, think of it: Where have all the waterboarders and other torturers gone? What happened to the Nazis,, the Fascists, Soviet Communists, the Khmer Rouge, Idi Amin and all those other tough guys who lived by the hammer, the whip, the fingernail pincers and the waterboards? Where are they now? Did they win? Hitler thought America and England were too soft because they were democracy and observed sillly humanitarian and religious morals. Apparently so do hardline Republicans these days. If they continue to lead, they will leave American downward, ever downward into depravity, and they will not even win anything but momentary hubris while we choke on their polluted values and a polluted legacy. Just say no.
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