Waterboarding
Listen carefully to John Mills description of his torture by the Japanese: Waterboarding!
shareExactly! That scene in 'Tunes of Glory' was the first thing I thought of when I heard waterboarding described. And I thought, nothing has changed in 65 years, except now we're the perpetrators.
shareObama left the option available in a imminent bomb scenario. Luckily you peon's don't have to worry about making those decisions. The Japanese did what they did as sadists, we did what we did to save lives from future attacks, big difference peon's. By the way it work wonders on Kalid Sheik Muhammed and helped to prevent more attacks. He sang like a bird.
shareOh right, the Japanese are the "bad guys", so they just tortured people to be mean, not to get vital information that might have saved their own soldiers. Whereas we're "good guys", so we only torture to get life saving information. What the hell are you, like 8 years old?
shareYou really should do some homework before equating the two situations.
The Japanese Army in WW2 exceeded the Nazis in sheer brutality, if not efficiency. This brutality included civilians as readily as enemy soldiers. Some were decapitated for not supplicating themselves before Japanese soldiers. Also, this treatment of the enemy was institutional. Read about Nanking. I could go on...
Despite the hysteria of most of the media, waterboarding is rarely used and has been invaluable in thwarting other terror plots or capturing other terror planners. For you to make the simplistic argument that each side is only trying to save it's own soldiers in obtuse. Terrorists aspire to mass murder. Listen to what they say and do. It's simple.
Please put the moral outrage aside long enough to realize that the US military waterboards many of it's own as part of their training. (Pilots, special forces, etc) They turn out well enough...
Finally, try imagining some one you love in some kind of imminent danger. Wouldn't you splash water up some criminal's nose to save your loved one? Be honest...
Oh, *beep* off. Take your goddamn double standard and shove it up your ass. Torture is torture. Torture is wrong. Don't give me any of that 'ticking time bomb scenario' crap. Don't give me any of that 'We do it to our own soldiers as part of training' crap.
"Splash water up some criminal's nose"... Your trivializing of a brutal and sadistic crime is in itself almost criminal. Go listen to some more Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
Creep.
So you prefer to see thousands more dead than a terrorist discomforted? For discomfort is about the only effect of waterboarding, the most extreme of American enhanced interrogation procedures.
The normal Japanese water torture, by the way, was to force water down an individual's throat until his stomach was visibly distended then apply a hard blow, often by jumping on the subject. The purpose wasn't usually to get information, but to amuse the torturers.
Bush and Obama are terrorists.Do you advocate their torture?
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
"Your trivializing of a brutal and sadistic crime is in itself almost criminal. Go listen to some more Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
Creep."
AND so dies another potentially civil thread; goodbye to you;
BTW: the chap you're dumping on is Canadian so he doesn't listen to Fox or Hannity or Rush---well maybe to the Band...
nm
Your response reveals that you are neither former military or intelligent. Life isn't conveniently black or white. We do waterboard soldiers and civilian intelligence operatives that are involved in strong measures to insure understanding of the limits of permissible questioning. To equate them with the WWII Imperial Japanese is beyond the bounds of even elementary logic, and insulting to thousands of brave British/Canadian/Australian/American Prisoners of War. If your politics do not allow you to agree with these practices, then disagree. But don't shame yourself with pretensions of "knowing" what you are talking about. You are talking about what you feel, not what you know. Next time perhaps we should sends these maniacs to your house for questioning by your wife and children, to avoid offending your sensitivities. I'm sure your superior morality and strong sense of fair play will win the day for us all.
BTW-Your moronic school-yard attempt at an insult by invoking Fox News and Rush Limbaugh is over-worked and boring rhetoric. Thinking people listen to many different voices without treating any as a clarion call to arms. Perhaps there is a reason you don't comprehend that statement.
Oh right, the Japanese are the "bad guys", so they just tortured people to be mean, not to get vital information that might have saved their own soldiers. Whereas we're "good guys", so we only torture to get life saving information.
That's about it, actually, assuming you consider waterboarding torture. Japanese torture started at where US enhanced interrogation leaves off and often ended with a rather prolonged and painful death for the subject. The Japanese also did this to a few million (yes million) more than the three the US has waterboarded.
Very true, DaveAAA. I would hate to be interrogated in any circumstances, or by any methods. But if I had to choose, I would prefer waterboarding rather than electric shock or the slow removal of fingernails or any of the methods of the Inquisition or the medieval witch-hunters.
shareRight. So war crimes are OK, as long as you only do three. Got it.
That assumes waterboarding is a crime, something that's not actually a given. Rape, beheading after beatings, mutilation while alive, biological and chemical warfare experiments on live subjects (and so note that those were applied to millions of people) are unarguably war crimes.
One can also argue that if it is a crime, then the defence of necessity is available to the US government. Hard to see what defence one can make for the Rape of Nanking and the Three Alls.
Waterboarding is indubitably a crime. Leave your sophistry at the door.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
Bascule water boarding, as practiced at Guantanamo was, of course, perfected at the Pecek Palace, home of the Gestapo in Prague.
Like many, the Governor of Bohemia, Reinhard Heydrich (of Wansee Protocol fame) was at first disappointed to see how tame this new method looked in practice but being a practical sort of chap, he was willing to take the word of the most skilful torturers in The Reich and they of course, were willing to embroider it with a bit of traditional hose and cigarette work to improve the spectacle for onlookers, a luxury which, we are assured, is not something US 'interrogators' are allowed. The Gestapo crew, however, regarded all other methods of inducing cooperation as inferior.
It is reassuring that, less than a generation later, there are still people with enough Machiavellian balls to guts it out with their consciences and stand toe to toe, side by side, with some of the most sadistic and most obviously evil people who ever lived.
" it work wonders on Kalid Sheik Muhammed and helped to prevent more attacks. He sang like a bird. "
He was singing like a bird before he was waterboarded.