Cheney dismissed too cavalierly [Chuck] Todd’s question about the prosecution of Japanese soldiers for waterboarding. One could quibble about whether these practices were exactly like the techniques practiced by CIA interrogators. But Todd raised a legitimate question and, contrary to Cheney’s assertion, waterboarding was an important charge in a number of the lesser-profile cases. Moreover, waterboarding also resulted in at least one court martial during the Vietnam War.
December 16, 2014
3 Pinocchios for Dick Cheney's assertion that we did not prosecute Japanese soldiers for waterboarding.
WaPo's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler says:
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One could quibble about whether these practices were exactly like the techniques practiced by CIA interrogators.
Yeah, I bet one could.
'Quibble'? 'exactly'?
We see what you did there. You're a fucking hack.
Theme for the day: the power of language to shape thinking. Here, we have a practice by Japan of something called waterboarding that was prosecuted as a war crime and a practice by the US of something also called waterboarding that is defended as legitimate.
When faced with the question, why there and not here, Cheney does not say "even though we use the same word, we are describing different actions." Instead he decides against fighting the power of language and simply denies the assertion that the Japanese were prosecuted. Which is doubly interesting in that the tactic he took is more easily fact checked than the one he did not take. In that moment, the power of language was scarier to him than the power of facts.
I think it's interesting that waterboarding, which is now apparently a crime against humanity, was commonly used by local law enforcement in the United States to elicit confessions as late as the 1940's. The Wickersham Report in 1931 detailed the extensive use of the "third degree" to elicit confessions, and after the report the water cure was technically illegal in the United States, but it's use didn't die out until several years later. Amazing how something so commonplace just 80 years ago can now be considered such a terrible crime.
in other words: IOKIWDI.
It was called "The Water Torture."
Cheney was right.
The Japanese had a program where they would perform experimental operations on captured American pilots. No anesthesia was administered to the pilots during the course of the operations. I believe the Japanese doctor who was in charge of this program sincerely apologized for his part in this atrocity after the war ended. Hey, it happens. The doctor did no prison time and went on to become head of the Japanese Red Cross.
Technically, I think the English term is the water "cure". The Dutch used it extensively in their brutal colonial regime in Indonesia, and we used it whilst suppressing independence movements in our colony in the Philippines early in the 20th century (while MacArthur's father was Governor General, I believe). The Japanese used it on our soldiers in their turn.
It was definitely torture, and we prosecuted the Japanese for it. I don't know for certain, but that might have been part of the command responsibility charges against Gen. Hong Sa-ik, a Korean general in the Imperial Japanese Army, and commanding general over the prison camps in the Philippines.
It's not waterboarding.
No, it's not. Google Schwedentrunk.
Cheney was right, Tim, to fear language. Language is the threat. The show exists to get deer in the headlights answers to when did you stop beating your wife questions. Facts are not the problem.
So, what we did or didn't do during WWII is now the standard?
Internment
Fire bombing Dresden and Tokyo
SS ST Louis
So, Mr. Vice President, since we locked up those Japs long ago, ...?
Give all those savages a Hellfire enema instead of a cheeseburger enema!
15 years hard labor would be an appropriate punishment for Cheney.
I'm giving Glenn Kessler 5 Pinocchios for drawing a false equivalence — that Cheney = Japanese WW2 war criminals.
I would give Kessler the 5 Pinocchios again in a minute and Kessler needs to come clean, move forward and vow never to do it again.
Michael K said...
It was called "The Water Torture."
The Disney version
If anyone cares to listen to the 16 disc audiobook of D-Day, I'm sure they'll be shocked to know our boys in uniform didn't always live up to the nicest standards.
We killed a lot of German prisoners after they had already surrendered.
We shot French woman suspected of being snipers or informants.
We cut off fingers to steal rings.
We used white phosphorus to burn men alive.
We sliced off genitalia.
We vandalized the dead.
I mean, I don't find it surprising at all that in times of duress, men turn to cruelty to avenge their feelings of anger and hatred toward an enemy.
I think we've established that there are worse things than waterboarding. Cutting peoples heads off is worse. Japanese water treatment is worse. Colonial sadism is worse.
But for God's sake, we're better than that. Cheney's morally bankrupt defense of CIA torture is more damning than the actual report.
But for God's sake, we're better than that.
God doesn't need to interrogate because he can mind read.
If anyone cares to listen to the 16 disc audiobook of D-Day, I'm sure they'll be shocked to know our boys in uniform didn't always live up to the nicest standards.
War is Hell. I think when you sign up for one, you know some of this stuff is going to happen.
I'm with Meade. If you read WWII history, you would know that one of the worst things to happen to an enemy soldier was to be captured by the Japanese. Torture was a given, and the lucky ones died early. Many American soldiers were found mutilated, with their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths.
Water torture was only one small component of their arsenal.
War is Hell. I think when you sign up for one, you know some of this stuff is going to happen.
A little unrelated, but tell John Kerry, or Jenjhis Khan.
We prosecuted the Japanese for mass murder, beheadings, starvation, and the like.
Waterbording? That was way down the list of any war crimes we were looking for.
Akira Muto and Iwane Matsui? They were prosecuted for the RAPE OF NANKING! Not 'waterbording'.
Yukio Asano, had many other charges against him (did we burn cigarettes into the terrorist?)
The American Solider that was court-martial in Vietnam DID torture a North Vietnamese soldier.. who WAS COVERED BY INTERNATIONAL LAW.
BUT.... Bush and Cheney were fighting terrorist WHO WERE NOT COVERED BY ANY INTERNATIONAL LAW.
And that is the main fact all the liberals want to ignore.
Let Cheney die in peace. The Scooter Libby sacrifice is enough.
Blogger Paul said...
We prosecuted the Japanese for mass murder, beheadings, starvation, and the like.
Waterbording? That was way down the list of any war crimes we were looking for.
---0---------
Exactly...there are NO war criminals prosecuted for waterboarding.
Henry, I'm not. I'm not good enough to fight this war. You go do it. Please let us know when it's over and I can fly with a quart of shampoo in my suitcase again.
One could quibble about whether these practices were exactly like the techniques practiced by CIA interrogators.
Isn't determining the specifics of what actually happened KIND OF BLOODY IMPORTANT?
Libtards. You can no longer treat them as if they are adults or at all capable of critical reasoning. I'm taking a page out of their own book and thinking of them more and more as inert masses of parasite tissue.
It is sad but I absolutely don't believe anything the Washington Post "Fact Checker" tells me. All inferences are drawn, and words defined, so as to come to the conclusion desired.
That "quibble" is doing a lot of work.
God doesn't need to interrogate because he can mind read.
And God has lots of patience.
But the point stands. Modern Western democracies don't advocate an exceptionally ethical standard in rules of engagement because it's easy or because everyone else will follow. They do it because they are modern Western democracies. We expect better of our leaders and our soldiers and to an unprecedented degree in history, our faith is justified.
From the point of expediency, a modern Western democracy can't sustain a war beyond a single administration if a large proportion of its citizens are unconvinced of the war's justness in conception and practice.
The Bush Administration may have choked up some intelligence from its hundreds of uses of waterboarding, but at tremendous cost to the conviction of many U.S. citizens that a long-term war on terrorism was worth fighting -- or worth fighting in active fashion.
In fact many of the seemingly expedient tactics of the Bush and Obama administrations have degraded the trust that U.S. citizens have in the Presidency. Thus our current President tries to act through proxies and drones while enveloping actual combat operations in a fuzz of false reassurances.
Perhaps we should feel lucky that our most successful long term strategies, such as the careful rolling up of terrorist financial networks, happen out of the limelight.
15 years hard labor would be an appropriate punishment for Cheney.
What would a Lefty know about hard labor?
Unknown -- Check your baggage.
Dick Cheney is an extremely intelligent man, and well read. I admire his ability to delve into a topic and master it. That makes his assertions about torture particularly wrong. He knows better, knew better, is lying, and lied.
Water boarding and other forms of mistreatment of prisoners is illegal, immoral, and only discourages the enemy from surrendering.
So not only is Cheney (and his crony Runsfeld) terrible at military tactics and strategy, he's also a torturing liar.
Henry said:
"The Bush Administration may have choked up some intelligence from its hundreds of uses of waterboarding, but at tremendous cost to the conviction of many U.S. citizens that a long-term war on terrorism was worth fighting -- or worth fighting in active fashion"
Henry; well, bullshit.
What cost Bush the convictions of many citizens was the orchestrated attacks by the mainstream media -in conjunction with the Democrat party- to make the Iraq war 'Bush's Vietnam." Remember the nightly casualty counts? the incessant negative reporting? Harry Reid's The war is lost speech?
How come Obama is not subjected to the nightly drone casualty lists? Pictures of the torn bodies of children shredded from 10,000 feet? You know the answer.
People here talk about war as if it was a board game or something. Extracting information from people who you know are your enemies is just a part of it. In 2002 no one could care less about torture/not torture because they knew we were at war. There was blood on the streets in Manhattan. Nowadays they have all been lulled back into the somnolent arms of consumerism. Which I think is a dangerous thing and a damn shame.
9/11, the terrorists VP Dick Cheney speaks about, were responsible for murdering nearly 3,000 people in the United States.
Remember?
Other short memories might have taken heed of
Isorko Yamamoto's quote about awakening a "sleeping giant".
That's twice America has been caught napping.
Heaven help the world if it happens a third time.
One could quibble about whether these practices were exactly like the techniques practiced by CIA interrogators.
Ever notice how when conservatives see significant differences it's mere quibbling but when left-wing loonies engage in quibbling then the differences are by definition profound?
At least as far as the Washington Post is concerned.
No Japanese soldier/officer was prosecuted exclusively for waterboarding. Waterboarding was included in a list of transgressions where just about everything else was much worse, including murder.
As bad as waterboarding is, I'm sure that every victim of Japanese war crimes would rather they were only waterboarded. Sorry lefties but Chuck Todd and others are introducing false equivilance twixt Cheney and Japanese war criminals who were genocidal.
I'm sorry, the defense here is our technique was a slightly better version of the "water cure" that everyone agrees is torture?
Cheney is liar and a criminal. With every word he utters, this becomes clearer.
According to Cheney, we only waterboarded three people? Only three? I guess it must be true since the "fact checker" didn't dispute it, but damn if the media doesn't make it seem like everybody captured was getting waterboarded.
@sojerofgod - I present the illness. You describe the symptoms.
So, exactly.
The fact that this administration only gets away with continued casualties in Afghanistan, full-bore NSA intelligence gathering, and pathetic excesses of its proxies because the media falls over for him proves my point.
You know and I know that it would take very little pushback to get President Obama to disassociate himself from his own operations.
"One could quibble about whether these practices were exactly like the techniques practiced by CIA interrogators."
That's a quibble? If one involves rupturing your stomach and one doesn't its kind of a big difference.
The US soldiers were in uniform, captured on the battlefield, and not using civilians as human shields. Thus, they are entitled to the protections of Geneva.
The terrorists were captured in civilian clothes, hiding amongst civilians, using civilians as human shields. Thus, they are not entitled to the protections of Geneva.
And that doesn't even address whether Nipponese 'waterboarding' was like CIA waterboarding.
One could quibble with whether Kessler is in fact a sentient being. What an obfuscatory liar.
Let's have journalists sort out whether it's a quibble. First let's have them let interrogators waterboard them the way we do it now (and the way journalists already tested by being water boarded) . And then let's have the interrogators use the water torture where we rupture their stomachs. And then let's take notes and compare.
Let's do the same to our servicemen. Let's train them using water boarding the way we used it during training, and then let's "train" them using Japanese style water boarding, and let's see how many servicemen graduate using the first method and how many die using the second. And let's see if we use water boarding Japanese style if the govt can use it on our troops and say "it's not torture, it's training. Because they agreed to it"
"Skyler said...
Qater boarding and other forms of mistreatment of prisoners is illegal, immoral, and only discourages the enemy from surrendering."
This is moronic. How does waterboarding "discourages the enemy from surrendering".
"jr565 said...
That's a quibble? If one involves rupturing your stomach and one doesn't its kind of a big difference."
Not to idiots like mike:
" Mike said...
I'm sorry, the defense here is our technique was a slightly better version of the "water cure" that everyone agrees is torture?"
I wonder if Kessler agree to allow waterboarding a captured Taliban leader if he was told:
1) Using the technique could prevent another school massacre like the one we read about this morning.
2) Intelligence experts believed just such an attack might be in the works.
3) It was up to him, Kessler, to make the call.
That was the position Dick Cheney and John Yoo and others found themselves in after the unimaginable suddenly became terribly real.
Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Mike wrote:
"I'm sorry, the defense here is our technique was a slightly better version of the "water cure" that everyone agrees is torture?"
If something is better than that which we defined as torture, then it's disingenuous of you to compare the two and suggest they are the same, despite having similar sounding titles.
Give it a rest, Althouse.
There was nothing new in the Senate reoport, other than perhaps the "rectal rehydration" bit, and nobody is moving from their chosen positions.
Wrong and wrong. Americans trust their government less, true, but it's not because of "torture". It's because of things like the IRS auditing Ben Carson the day after he gives a speech at the national prayer breakfast that was critical of Obamacare. It's because we say how the Dems used parliamentary tricks to shove the ACA down our throats when we never wanted it. It's because of the rolling disaster that the ACA has become, no matter how you spin it, and the fact that most Americans want the government to do less, not more. It's because of the Obama economy, where ordinary Americans are watching their wages stagnate and their unemployed friends taking part time jobs because nobody is hiring much full time work anymore, at the same time that the Fed prints money with abandon to keep the boys on Wall Street (who mostly give to Dems these days) richer and richer. It's because the media somehow managed to convince the public that we found NO WMDS!! Then turns around and blames Bush for not doing enough to protect our soldiers who were exposed to those same "nonexistent" WMDs while serving in Iraq. It's because of things like Russia running rampant with nary a peep from the White House, because a thug getting his ass capped in Ferguson, MO is somehow more deserving of our Dear Leader's attention. And why? Skin color, of course. Because America is seeing what Obama really cares about, and have decided that three hundred rounds of golf, race-baiting, and expensive vacations for the wife shouldn't be so high on the executive priority list. But somehow they are right now, and Americans aren't happy, and so we distrust the government and the sycophantic media that aids and abets their misdeeds.
Torture has nothing to do with it. To really think otherwise is foolish. To try to convince others that it does is disingenuous.
In other words, par for the course for our leftist comrades.
Mike it's like making the argument thwt we are no better than ISIS because we waterboard three people and they chop the heads off of journalists. If you asked said journalists would you rather be water boarded the way we waterboard people we train in the military OR have your head sawed off slowly how many would choose the latter?
Then, you can't make the argument that we are the same if we are not in fact the doing the same things.
Hey other Mike, they are not "slightly different" but are wholly unalike. The Water Cure is a deliberate infliction of pain that ruptures organs and causes death. Waterboarding is when a towel is placed over the face and water is poured across it producing panic as the body reacts as if the subject cannot breathe.
It is uncomfortable and was used infrequently. But it in no way resembles the deliberate force-filling of the stomach with water to point of distension, whereupon the victim is beat and stomped to rupture the stomach.
If you have to lie about what is being discussed then you are as dishonest as Glenn "Pinochio" Kessler.
Considering what Japanese soldiers, officers and prison camp guards did to tens of thousands of people, some water up the nostrils is "chump change".
Let's ask Mr. Todd and Mr. Kessler whether any Japanese solider/officer/guard was prosecuted as a war criminal solely because of "water torture" waterboarding etc. Then we can talk about Pinocchios--meantime we're talking about horse puckey.
Defenders of Torture Unite!
Another hypothetical.
Would Kessler agree to water board a captured Tea Partier if Democrat political operatives told him the technique could yield information that would prevent Sarah Palin from being elected to national office?
machine said...
Defenders of Torture Unite!
Sorry, I can't here your latest purposeful conflation of actual torture to what the US did over the screams of over 100 school children ritualistically murdered by some more of the leftist islamist heroes in Pakistan.
Another banner day for the left.
Not to worry, I'll be sure to focus all my energy on not impugning the religion of peace and asking the only real question on leftists minds: what did those school children do to the reasonable muslim terrorists that caused the terrorists to kill them?
15 years hard labor would be an appropriate punishment for Cheney
Come the revolution, we are all going against the wall, right garage? You will be just like Che, pulling the trigger, then enjoying a fine breakfast, I'm sure.
I have read accounts of "water torture" in the Dutch possessions in the East Indies, and it bore little resemblance to water boarding, except both used water.
The thing is that there were not that many Japanese prisoners. The Japanese were not wild about surrender and the US military made every effort to not take Japanese prisoners. Don't believe me, I have a WWII picture that you will not find in the books of a military sign posted above the road. It said "they (the Japanese) are killing American Prisoners, kill the SOB's. Then when we got high ranking Germans, they went to the Tower of London. They told everything very shortly. The Americans and British likely did not waterboard as they had much worse techniques.
Mike: "If you have to lie about what is being discussed then you are as dishonest as Glenn "Pinochio" Kessler"
Hey garage/machine, are you paying attention?
Fuck you Henry.
Those shits set out in a calculated way to mass murder children. Now is not the time to be delivering lectures on the morality of water boarding. There is no possible way we can lose the moral high ground in this war........I'm open to suggestions. Can someone tell me how you can win a war save by killing and mistreating your enemy? Tactical dispersal of marshmallows in combat zones?
Of course the Allies used torture during WWII. Scores of millions had died and it needed to end.
If terrorists had a nuclear device set to go off in LA, would we torture to find it? If you say no, you are a fiend, if you say yes, you are just arguing about the price.
There is a difference IN LAW between waterboarding an illegal combatant and waterboarding and enemy soldier as defined by Geneva 1, 2 and 3.
Waterboarding terrorists? Go for it. Waterboarding uniformed prisoners of war? Federal pen for you!
Get it?
Tim:"There is a difference IN LAW between waterboarding an illegal combatant and waterboarding and enemy soldier as defined by Geneva 1, 2 and 3."
True.
But the left NEEDS there to be NO difference politically.
The intent once again is to change the subject from the participation/review/approval of dems with the CIA program from the very beginning to something, anything, else.
And the fully-grubered foot soldiers of the left such as we see here are more than happy to pretend up is down.
if you say yes, you are just arguing about the price.
That is exactly what the argument is about.
Right Henry, no price in US lives is too high to pay for you to maintain your sense of smug superiority.
At least you admit it.
If you want to have some fun, get a lefty to quote the Geneva Convention where it backs up their story.
It is a short document.
I wish Dick Cheney would quit inserting himself into this debate. I'd much rather hear from CIA officers and others about the EITs that were used.
Cheney is a draft dodging drunk. I still can't believe HW appointed this coward Secretary of Defense, much less that W picked him as his VP. Cheney is a knowledgeable, intelligent man, and he is a disgrace.
Cheney didn't waterboard anyone because he was never in the military or the CIA. He was too busy racking up deferments and DUIs.
I don't think this important issue about the use and effectiveness of EITs should be sidetracked by giving this coward any airtime.
Let's all remember that in the final analysis what we're talking about is crimes against sensibilities, sensibilities that no matter how collective they may be are ultimately subjective, like the crime of putting mayonnaise on a hot dog.
The recipients were not covered under international law, and both the Bush and subsequent Obama administrations deemed the actions taken against them legal under U. S. law.
One might as well try to shame the CIA and Cheney for being sluts.
Can we cut the shit here????
The Japanese engaged in what was then called "water torture", which consisted of forcing water into the stomach and lungs of prisoners, who then DIED from drowning or had their stomachs stomped on.
It was cruel, sadistic and deadly.
"Waterboarding" involves the simulation of drowning; water isn't forced into the body, and the prisoner does not die.
There's no "nuance" or "quibbling" here. Just the stark facts.
Deal with it.
We didn't torture quite as bad as our enemies. Makes me proud to be an American.
Henry wrote:
if you say yes, you are just arguing about the price.
That is exactly what the argument is about.
if we are trying to prevent an attack say, and don't get the information and the attack goes through aren't the people who get killed in the attack (very probably in a horrific manner) in fact paying the price? You never deal with the price of your inaction. You get clean hands on waterboarding but have dirty hands on 9/11 part II. Why are you making others pay for your inability to deal with such dire circumstances with their lives.
If you were the guy kidnapped by ISIS and your execution was next week and they were going to chop off your head on video and then use your death for propaganda Id hope that our govt was doing EVERYHING to prevent that from occurring. If they csugt one of the The Beatles (the four Brits who had gone over to ISIS and are inclined in the assassinations) and we ha good reason to believe he knew where you were how much pressure would you want us to apply to him to prevent you from getting your head chopped off. If they went past the army field manual would you say we were no better than the guy who decapitates you?
Here's the difference: We're the good guys. These people are fucking terrorists. Look what they do to school children. They're fucking evil. If we need to get some of them wet to get intel, so be it. Hey, if they win the war, then they can prosecute to their heart's content. Until then, we should do what we need to do to win.
A man who pushes a little old lady INTO the way of a car is accurately described as "a man who pushed a little old lady".
And a man who pushes a little old lady OUT of the way of a car is ALSO accurately described as "a man who pushed a little old lady", but it is inaccurate to declare them morally equivalent.
The playbook has always been, take something that isn't torture and call it torture and then condemn people for using torture.
Examples of torture now include wrapping detainees in an Israeli flag and smearing menstrual blood on them.
@garage mahal:We didn't torture quite as bad as our enemies. Makes me proud to be an American.
You argue in bad faith; you call any discussion of where to draw the line "defending torture".
Can we ask a detainee a question repeatedly? Is that torture?
Can we put a hand on his shoulder?
Can we shake him?
Can we yell at him?
Can we slap him and how hard?
Can we PRETEND to slap him?
Can we wake him?
Can we keep him awake and how long?
Can we take his Quran away and for how long?
Can we isolate him and for how long?
You will never answer any of these questions, because you don't actually care. You want a rhetorical stick with which to beat your opponents, you don't care one whit about the detainees or obtaining intelligence from them.
Most Americans approve of 24-style tactics on terrorist, which go way beyond anything our government was doing.
At least Cheney did not assassinate any Americans - like Obama did. Don't we put people in jail for doing this?
Describe it as planned communication.
Move it to Planned Parenthood.
Replace waterboarding with lethal injection, decapitation, and dismemberment.
Call it pro-choice, which is applicable whether the subject is wholly innocent, guilty, or undetermined.
@jr565 - There is a price of action as well and many Americans have paid it.
Contra Vermont Tim's interpretation I do not say no price is too high. I say there is a price. That is what we are arguing about.
My argument is that the cost of refusing to torture must be compared to the price paid for torturing. The price paid is both moral and strategic.
Speaking just to the strategic issues, among other things the war on terrorists is a propaganda war. What torture wins in information may well be lost on other fronts. On the home front, we may lose the will of citizens to support continued operations. Among the terrorists we may increase their ability to recruit. Internationally, we may find ourselves divided from potential allies.
These are examples of establishing the price to be paid.
It is fine for Obama to kill innocents with drones. Because he is a Democrat and Democrats are not capable of wrong -- just as blacks are incapable of racism.
Cheney is a war criminal because he is a Republican. Details will be found to flesh out the indictment, but the verdict is already known.
In war, there are no firm price tags. Everything is negotiable until the bomb drops, then it's just the aftermath.
If there's a nuke in Chicago, and we interrogate without EIT, and the bomb goes off before we get the info to find it, we would say the price was too low - we didn't do enough.
Same scenario, but this time we do EIT. We still don't get the info, maybe because we caught a patsy set up by the enemy as a distraction. We would say the price was too high, even though we did everything we could do get the info.
Same scenario, but this time we use EIT and get the needed info. The bomb is defused, and 40 kilotons of nuke doesn't go off. We'd say the price was right, but maybe 20 years later, when the event has softened and our memories of the fear and terror about "what could have been" are faded, we go back and decide that the price was too high; we treated a terrorist "inhumanely", and the crusaders of the Left feel like they've retaken some moral high ground.
This third scenario is where we're at. We were terrified of more attacks, and awestruck at how well coordinated and planned these primitives were to be able to execute the operation on 9/11. Did anyone sincerely think that from 9/12 onwards, we'd be safe for as long as we've been? I sure didn't. This, to me and other thinking Americans, means that the measures we took in the months and yeas afterwards were justified - they were the right price. It's really that simple.
No blood, no foul. People get hurt worse on the playground fer Chrissakes
You argue in bad faith; you call any discussion of where to draw the line "defending torture".
Torture may be difficult for you to understand, but that doesn't mean the rest of us grapple with it. Well, some of us.
World War II was a ferocious conflict fought under an entirely different set of rules than we impose on our military and society today. The brutalities of the Eastern Front are legendary. Russians and Germans massacred prisoners as a matter of course, and killed civilians whenever it suited their purpose. A little torture now and then was a drop in the bucket.
The Americans, British and Germans treated each other's prisoners considerably better. The hatreds did not run as deep, the fighting was not as desperate and each side had something to gain by more compassionate treatment. But there were plenty of incidents, and many on the allied side were not punished.
In the Pacific, the brutality of the Japanese was a given. The Japanese were probably the most virulent racists in the war. They viewed all their opponents as inferior on every level. Plus the Japanese troops were brutalized by their commanders and it was a matter of course for them.
Americans took few prisoners in the Pacific. It is usually said that is because the Japanese were fanatical and would not surrender. That was certainly a factor, but the Americans often killed Japanese trying to surrender rather than accepting the surrenders. This fed the Japanese will to resist to the end. Indeed the American forces had no significant apparatus to take and house Japanese prisoners. In island fighting, it would have been very difficult logistically to do so, and by and large we did not try. There was really a command expectation that we would kill the Japanese rather than capture them.
This is what happens in an all out bitter and strongly contested war, in which there are high casualties on both sides and the entire society is engaged in the struggle. If America ever had to fight such a war again, I suspect that we would quickly lose patience with the moral code we try to enforce on today's battlefield. That code is a luxury when the fighting is not as desperate and there is (apparently at least) less at risk for the American civilian.
"Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail."
President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who in 1929 shut down the office in the U.S. State Department responsible for breaking codes to read messages sent between embassies of other countries and their capitals.
Waterboarding was used on our own military as part of the SERE program.
@garage mahal:Torture may be difficult for you to understand, but that doesn't mean the rest of us grapple with it. Well, some of us.
Proving my point.
Why don't youanswer any of the questions I asked?
It's a rhetorical question--we all know why you don't answer.
@David:The Americans, British and Germans treated each other's prisoners considerably better.
Americans and British "tortured", under the 2014 standard, whenever they felt the need.
Why don't youanswer any of the questions I asked?
Because they are stupid, childish strawmen, as per your usual.
Henry wrote:
What torture wins in information may well be lost on other fronts. On the home front, we may lose the will of citizens to support continued operations. Among the terrorists we may increase their ability to recruit. Internationally, we may find ourselves divided from potential allies.
If ISIS/Al Qaeda were to get off a successful 9/11 part 2 that would also lead to in an increase in their ability to recruit, and also get more an more Americans saying "Why didn't you do more to stop the attack that led to the death of 3000+ people. Why couldn't you connect the dots?"
@garage mahal:Because they are stupid, childish strawmen, as per your usual.
A detainee won't answer your questions. What should it be legal to do?
Answer, coward.
But for God's sake, we're better than that.
No. We're not.
The stakes are western civilization vs 7th century barbarity. There are no morals in this war. There are no ethics. One side or the other will survive.
So have a latte and pick out a rug.
cheers
Garage's answer is to release the detainee. If he won't talk, let him go to fight again. That's whose side garage is on. He's never stated otherwise.
During the 80's, South Korea put down demonstrations against the then military regime with considerable brutality. North Korea showed pictures of these crackdowns throughout their media. Then they stopped. What people were noticing was how well fed and well clothed the protesters were. They also noted the late model cars and modern housing in the background.......The torture methods that Americans used probably give everyone who has ever spent time in a Mideast jail a WTF epiphany. The protesters in Egypt will soon be demanding water boarding and the abolition of genital bashing by their security services.......I'm sure that there are many in the Mideast who are now adamantly anti Russian because of that country's support for Assad. And it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.
garage: "Torture may be difficult for you to understand, but that doesn't mean the rest of us grapple with it."
LOL
The guy who was convinced just 24 hours ago that Tojo (Yes! Tojo) was executed for waterboarding, is lecturing others on grappling with torture!
That's even funnier than when garage "forgot" to ask his "easy to answer questions" about Brown/Ferguson and yet demanded answers to his non-existent questions.
Thanks for continuing to "grapple" with the big issues garage.
If by "grapple" you mean parrot invalid "Paul Begala" Huffington Post articles and cut and paste from Media Matters.
William: "During the 80's, South Korea put down demonstrations against the then military regime with considerable brutality. North Korea showed pictures of these crackdowns throughout their media. Then they stopped. What people were noticing was how well fed and well clothed the protesters were. They also noted the late model cars and modern housing in the background......"
Similar to why the Soviets stopped showing pictures of Americas "slums" where the Soviets claimed the US forced blacks to live as modern slave labor.
The Soviet people couldn't help but notice that the folks in America's slums had nicer stuff than they did.
Especially cars.
The Soviets "helpfully" explained to their people that blacks were not allowed to drive their cars on the road.
This made no sense of course, but then, when does a leftist explaining anything make sense?
Here's another quibble to consider: when the US won WWII, it stopped firebombing cities, released Japanese-Americans from internment camps, and allowed the civilian populations of conquered lands to reconstitute their lives.
When the Japanese and Germans conquered a location, it damn well stayed conquered. The populace was considered to exist solely to serve their masters, and shipments to concentration camps, mass killings, and slave labor was the norm.
Under the category of how to differentiate good from evil, I would suggest that good knows when to stop being necessarily violent.
If your big problem is the bad publicity then I have a suggestion:
SHUT UP ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If Al Qaeda knows that we won't go beyond our field manual then they merely have to read out field manual to know what the can expect and the techniques used as well as that they can withstand being broken. Now take 9/11. Since it happened you can't say it's beyond the realm of possibility that it could happen.
We have people who know what our limitis with interrogation are and know we can go know fuether.
Suppose we get a memo that Al Qaeda is determined to attack us in less than a month and that its going to make 9/11 look tame in comparison. Now suppose we capture the guy who plans attacks for 9/11. We know who he is based on numerous intelligence reports so there is no question of his innocence.
What are you prepared to do to get him to talk. You don't want to torture him but you know he has studied our field manual and can therefore withstand interrogation. And your timing is limited since you don't have a year to build a rapport
And probably never will
Anyway since he hates westerners. Tick tock.
If such an attack were to occur AGAIN would your defense be "but we disnt waterboard him!"
So my loved ones moments in life would be jumping off a burning skyscraper or
Crushed under tons of metal because you had a guy who knew about this plot but had no answer other than an army field manual to get him to divulge the info? Im sure my loved ones can go to their horrific deaths secure in tje knowledge that we didn't muss a hair on his head. They died horrifically but we didn't lose our souls. Except we allowed them to die horrifically and did nothing. And my loved ones had to pay the price for your moral fecklessness. No thanks garage. Let your loved ones be the ones that make that sacrifice.
The Army field manual on interrogation is designed for lawful combatants. It is not designed and was never conceived or written as a resource for exploiting illegal combatants and murderous terrorists who are outside the protections afforded to lawful combatants.
Trying to pretend there's no difference is idiotic. But I don't put anything beyond libtards anymore.
@garage mahal: Crickets.
You have proved by your actions: you have nothing menaingful to contribute and you care nothing about the issue except how you can use it to bash Team Red.
You don't really care who gets tortured or why. That's a sad, tiny little moral universe you live in.
The Japanese really went overboard. If they had restricted themselves to simply dousing captured soldiers in water and chaining them to near-freezing concrete until they died, they would never have been prosecuted at all.
Here's another quibble to consider: when the US won WWII, it stopped firebombing cities, released Japanese-Americans from internment camps, and allowed the civilian populations of conquered lands to reconstitute their lives.
Were the war being fought today, we'd have kept the prisoners indefinitely until there were no fascists or imperialists left anywhere on Earth.
What big sillies we were back then -- fighting wars it was actually possible to win.
Suppose we get a memo that Al Qaeda is determined to attack us in less than a month and that its going to make 9/11 look tame in comparison. Now suppose we capture the guy who plans attacks for 9/11. We know who he is based on numerous intelligence reports so there is no question of his innocence.
Suppose you confine yourself to one of the dozens of actual cases where we tortured somebody instead of inventing hypotheticals that match nothing that has ever happened in the history of human warfare?
"Supposed aliens landed and said they'd blow up the world tomorrow unless you killed a baby. See, abortion should be legal!"
@ Gabriel:
You have proved by your actions: you have nothing menaingful to contribute and you care nothing about the issue except how you can use it to bash Team Red.
If by Team Red you mean the Republicans, this is a winning issue. 'Security Moms' Are Back—and That's Bad News for Democrats
In a time of national anxiety, women voters are again turning to Republicans to protect the country.
Thanks to the media for that reminder!
And there is this:
A Pew Research poll finds that the mainstream media and Democrats failed miserably in their coordinated attacks against the Bush Administration (and America) over Bush-era enhanced interrogation methods employed by the CIA against 3 terrorists to stop future terror attacks (and hunt down 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden).
Only 29% said the methods in question were unjustified. A majority of 51% consider them justified. A clear majority refused to buy into the media's lies about these methods not working. A full 56% believe correctly that the intelligence gathered stopped future terror attacks. Only 28% disagreed.
@Revenant:Were the war being fought today, we'd have kept the prisoners indefinitely until there were no fascists or imperialists left anywhere on Earth.
I'm sure you meant to add "with the vast majority being released well before then."
Since there never were more than 750, and of those 136 are still detained, clearly most are released.
You have a fine brain, Revenant, and it's sad to see you turn it off.
Early Revenant: "The Japanese really went overboard. If they had restricted themselves to simply dousing captured soldiers in water and chaining them to near-freezing concrete until they died, they would never have been prosecuted at all."
Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of civilians and innocents would have lived in that case that were, of course, actually murdered.
But hey, we've got a couple of handful of cases of individuals captured on the battlefield (I know you don't accept that, perhaps they were just being paid to handle weapons during battles) you're concerned about.
Way to keep it "equivalent" revenant.
The Japanese water torture was to force someone to ingest huge amounts of water until their stomach was distended, and then jumped on to make them vomit it up. And then repeated indefinitely. It was portrayed in the film To End All Wars.
The Chinese water torture was to restrain someone and drop water on their forehead one drop at a time. This caused no physical discomfort, but was intended to slowly drive the person insane.
While the Japanese was physical torture, the Chinese was psychological torture. Note how silly it would be to treat the two as if they were the same just because they are both described as water torture. In fact, one could potentially be accused of racism for equating the two, since it treats unlike things as like just because they are east Asian.
Water boarding is to restrain someone, reclining them so their head is down, covering their face with something like plastic wrap, and then pouring water on the covering. This apparently instigates the gag reflex, which in turn instigates panic. While it does not cause pain or the actual ingestion of water (if done right), it is certainly physically uncomfortable. However its effectiveness comes from the panic it induces which is psychological. Whether it should be treated as a form of torture is a difficult point, because other methods of instigating panic are not considered torture. This doesn't mean it's not torture, it just means we need further argumentation to demonstrate that it is.
Did anyone see the Megyn Kelly interview with Mitchell, the man named as the torturer in the Senate report. The man was manifestly sane, decent, and honorable. He felt that there was a need for coerced methods. This was in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 event, and everyone felt that there was the strong possibility of a second strike. It was by no means some kind of weird, paranoid delusion...... It was not a job he especially wanted to do or especially enjoyed doing. He did it because he felt it was in the best interests of the country......He articulated his feelings of betrayal by that Senate Report. No one asked for his side of the story.......If you fall on the wrong side of a liberal narrative, then God help your sorry ass. He got his story out on Fox, but you just know in the movie version, the one directed by Oliver Stone, his part will be played by Christopher Waitz and there will be a lot of maniacal laughter.
ObeliskToucher: "President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who in 1929 shut down the office in the U.S. State Department responsible for breaking codes to read messages sent between embassies of other countries and their capitals."
Ya... the same Henry L Stimson who, as Secretary of War under FDR, oversaw the internment of Japanese-Americans on the west coast a dozen years later followed by the development of the atomic bomb. It just took Pearl Harbor and WWII to get his mind right.
Revenant wrote:
Suppose you confine yourself to one of the dozens of actual cases where we tortured somebody instead of inventing hypotheticals that match nothing that has ever happened in the history of human warfare?
KSM was the logistical planner for Al Qaeda, and likely was the mastermind behind 9/11. We captured him. My hypothetical then is directly related to an actual event and not something that matchers nothing that ever happened in the history of human warfare.
Here is my quote that you say matches nothing that has ever happened in the history of human warfare:
"Suppose we get a memo that Al Qaeda is determined to attack us in less than a month and that its going to make 9/11 look tame in comparison. "
We got a memo about how Al Qaeda was "Determined to attack us". which the left went bonkers trying to suggest that Bush KNEW we were going to be attacked and did nothing. Even though it said nothing about where or when the attack would occur.
"Now suppose we capture the guy who plans attacks for 9/11 (that should have said Al Qaeda) . We know who he is based on numerous intelligence reports so there is no question of his innocence."
We did capture that exact guy. His Name Was Kalleid Sheik Mohammad.
So, the hypothetical not far fetched at all.
What do you think is allowable to get information from him if we think there might be a second attack that might kill even more Americans? The left and the libertarians deny that there are ticking time bomb scenarios even though we are in this mess because a theoretical bomb went off and we are now cleaning up the mess.
Revenant wrote:
Were the war being fought today, we'd have kept the prisoners indefinitely until there were no fascists or imperialists left anywhere on Earth.
What big sillies we were back then -- fighting wars it was actually possible to win.
We dropped nukes on Japan. that's how we got them to stop fighting. You want to worry about a guy dying of hypothermia when whole cities got nuked? That's how we won.
You seem to think WWII was winnable only you ignore what it took to win. IF Bush were using nukes to win, we'd probably win if nukes were dropped. But most people wouldn't want us to use nukes.
"Did anyone see the Megyn Kelly interview with Mitchell, the man named as the torturer in the Senate report. The man was manifestly sane, decent, and honorable."
No man willing to oversee a torture program is "sane, decent" or "honorable," no matter how much he may wear the mask of being these things. A sane, decent and honorable man would have resigned from the government rather than participate in any torture program.
(Most real humans, even the most evil, do not present with the exaggerated lip-smacking, salivating, shouting or chortling mannerisms of movie villains. Even Stalin has been described as being a "people person," very charming. Hitler's secretary like him and said he was a good boss.)
"Most Americans approve of 24-style tactics on terrorist, which go way beyond anything our government was doing."
What "most" Americans hypothetically "approve" has nothing to do with what is actually constitutional or legal (or ethical or decent). If most Americans approved of slavery as an efficient way to produce wealth, this would not make slavery any less despicable, any more acceptable, or anything other than an abominable practice
This, too, is true of torture.
"The stakes are western civilization vs 7th century barbarity. There are no morals in this war. There are no ethics."
Oh, for god's sake...shit your pants much?
The stakes are hardly so high as you exclaim, not even fractionally so. The greatest danger to us is ourselves. If you believe it is fine to conduct ourselves with "no ethics, no morals," then we've already lost and are the 7th Century barbarians you're so scared of.
(Actually, this isn't so far from the truth.)
Sorry I'm a bit late to the party ont his one. Yes, Kessler's going along with Judge Evan Wallach's equivocal argument from the "Drop By Drop" essay. There are differences between the "water cure" and "waterboarding" and fact checkers shouldn't paper them over.
PolitiFact and FactCheck.org have produced similarly misleading articles about supposed past prosecutions for "waterboarding."
There's a fact checker that doesn't go for such nonsense, fortunately:
http://www.zebrafactcheck.com/waterboarding-fact-check-kessler-vs-cheney/
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