Torture

SR_

SR_

Junior Member
Today a story was published on cnn.com concerning a photograph of Nazis digging up the graves of POW's after the war was over. This was apart of an investigation into torture and war crimes against POW camp commands.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/22/berga.folo/index.html

The corresponding story along with photo details how some Uniformed Soldiers were peared off from other POW's because they were jewish, "looked" jewish, or were problem soldiers for the German captors. These POW's were force marched 150 miles in addition to being placed in slave labor camps, working on among other things, tunnels for the German government.

When they were liberated most were emaciated, weighing in around 80lbs.

This week President Obama released memos of mainly known information detailing how the US "tortured" enemy combatants, by such methods as stomach slapping, putting insects in confinement containers, pushing prisoners up against a wall, sleep deprivation, playing loud music and waterboarding. In addition these prisoners are/were fed well, clothed well, constantly monitored for health problems, provided with excellent health care, provided with worship material, and other horrible atrocities.

Morton Goldstein was one of the POW's kept at Berga. He was executed, shot in the head, and after his body fell, other german soldiers continued to shoot his corpse. 100 or more US Soldiers died on the forced march for looking or being jewish. 22 bodies were found in the mass grave represented in the photo from the CNN story.

We have lost perspective. Torture as of today now has no definition for any context in any conversation.

Could anyone have imagined that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks currently sits in an air conditioned cell, monitored 24 hours a day, fed well, provided with better medical care than anyone reading this post, medical technicians on duty 24 hours a day within walking distance from his or any of his other fellow terrorists cell, he's provided with a new Koran whenever he wishes. The actual man who planned the deaths of over 3,000 Americans had water poured on his face, never any threat of physical harm or death, and HE's a victim of torture?

If this is torture, then what is what happened to the US Soldiers who's bodies were exhumed in the photograph? It cant be torture, these men were actually physically harmed, actually criminally mistreated, actually lost their lives because of that treatment.

A little perspective might help some people in this country understand what the difference between something thats truly worth outrage, and the idiotic that is truly outrageous.

SR
 
The US executed Japanese for waterboarding Americans. It was torture then, it's considered torture now. End of fucking story. Good to see you back.
 
If it can be demonstrated that waterboarding has saved American lives, I'm all for it, so long as it is also proven that the recipient is involved in terrorism. At that point, who really gives a fuck? Would you prefer another attack on American soil? Apparently that is the case...
 
ib1yysguy said:
The US executed Japanese for waterboarding Americans. It was torture then, it's considered torture now. End of fucking story. Good to see you back.
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This is untrue. Japanese Officers were executed for war crimes. The Japanese truly did torture US Service Members and executed many of them. You confuse their execution for crimes and their participation in water boarding which was not related to their specific sentence and it was not their only charge.

This is a liberal myth that the US or anyone else tried and executed Japanese military personnel on the charge of waterboarding.

Do you believe our CIA personnel deserve to be executed for pouring water on a persons face? I remind you, this does no physical harm and no one died during this process? Do you honestly believe Americans would put a man to death for something that did no physical harm and no one died from?

In 1947 Yukio Asano was charged with a host of war crimes that included beating prisoners with a club, burning prisoners with a cigarette and also water torture that was a different method of waterboarding than what the CIA used on KSM, mainly that his nose and mouth were covered so that water did not directly poor into his nose or mouth. He was not executed he was sentenced to 15 years hard labor.

But you prove my point. The entire perspective on the issue has been lost. You actually believe people were charged, tried, and executed for waterboarding. Theres no real desire to even think that this is ludicrous. That its not even the same waterboarding technique.

No physical harm or death has occured because of these methods. And yet you instantly equate them with the methods of convicted war criminals that were executed for actually cruelly beating US Servicemembers, starving them to death, providing no medical care, cutting their heads off, executing them, burning them, breaking their bones, etc..

Without perspective and some sense of desire to understand the truth, what do you describe these actions as? It cannot be torture by your definition, all of these actions do include physical harm, scaring, and death. They cannot both mean the same thing.

SR
 
Prisoners have died as a result of the torture authorized by the Bush administration, though not water boarding. They hung a guy up by his arms and beat his legs until he bled to death.

Clearly this needs to be investigated.
 
ib1yysguy said:
Prisoners have died as a result of the torture authorized by the Bush administration, though not water boarding. They hung a guy up by his arms and beat his legs until he bled to death.

Clearly this needs to be investigated.
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This is not in any way tied to approved interrogation techniques by the Bush administration. Are you now going to try and insinuate that I would NOT THINK that hanging a man by his arms and beating him until he bleeds to death wouldnt be considered torture?

Im assuming you are referring to Manadel al-Jamadi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manadel_al-Jamadi

There was an investigation.

There is nothing related to "The Bush Adminstration" in these instances, anyone could have been President. There is no memo approved by any administration official stating that its approved to hang a man by his arms and beat him to death. Are really naive enough to think that just because Barak Obama is now the Commander In Chief that people arent going to be murdered any more in war zones? These instances arent political, this discussion isnt political. This is about the state of our nation and its loss of perspective on reality.

What you mentioned is not related to the discussion at hand.

You dont have any comment about no one ever being executed for waterboarding?

SR
 
SR_ said:
Today a story was published on cnn.com concerning a photograph of Nazis digging up the graves of POW's after the war was over. This was apart of an investigation into torture and war crimes against POW camp commands.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/22/berga.folo/index.html

The corresponding story along with photo details how some Uniformed Soldiers were peared off from other POW's because they were jewish, "looked" jewish, or were problem soldiers for the German captors. These POW's were force marched 150 miles in addition to being placed in slave labor camps, working on among other things, tunnels for the German government.

When they were liberated most were emaciated, weighing in around 80lbs.

This week President Obama released memos of mainly known information detailing how the US "tortured" enemy combatants, by such methods as stomach slapping, putting insects in confinement containers, pushing prisoners up against a wall, sleep deprivation, playing loud music and waterboarding. In addition these prisoners are/were fed well, clothed well, constantly monitored for health problems, provided with excellent health care, provided with worship material, and other horrible atrocities.

Morton Goldstein was one of the POW's kept at Berga. He was executed, shot in the head, and after his body fell, other german soldiers continued to shoot his corpse. 100 or more US Soldiers died on the forced march for looking or being jewish. 22 bodies were found in the mass grave represented in the photo from the CNN story.

We have lost perspective. Torture as of today now has no definition for any context in any conversation.

Could anyone have imagined that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks currently sits in an air conditioned cell, monitored 24 hours a day, fed well, provided with better medical care than anyone reading this post, medical technicians on duty 24 hours a day within walking distance from his or any of his other fellow terrorists cell, he's provided with a new Koran whenever he wishes. The actual man who planned the deaths of over 3,000 Americans had water poured on his face, never any threat of physical harm or death, and HE's a victim of torture?

If this is torture, then what is what happened to the US Soldiers who's bodies were exhumed in the photograph? It cant be torture, these men were actually physically harmed, actually criminally mistreated, actually lost their lives because of that treatment.

A little perspective might help some people in this country understand what the difference between something thats truly worth outrage, and the idiotic that is truly outrageous.

SR
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You are a moron. Not a little one either if you cannot distinguish the difference between execution and torture.
 
Tabasco said:
If it can be demonstrated that waterboarding has saved American lives, I'm all for it, so long as it is also proven that the recipient is involved in terrorism. At that point, who really gives a fuck? Would you prefer another attack on American soil? Apparently that is the case...
Click to expand...

Really, and if some foreign power captures an American soldier and tortures him is that ok. I mean we do it so it should be ok for them to do it too, right?

Or should we just abandon the rules of war and say anything goes? Might makes right?
 
The Following is more on Water boarding during WWII.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

By Evan Wallach
Sunday, November 4, 2007; Page B01

As a JAG in the Nevada National Guard, I used to lecture the soldiers of the 72nd Military Police Company every year about their legal obligations when they guarded prisoners. I'd always conclude by saying, "I know you won't remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That's a pretty good standard for life and for the law, and even though I left the unit in 1995, I like to think that some of my teaching had carried over when the 72nd refused to participate in misconduct at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Sometimes, though, the questions we face about detainees and interrogation get more specific. One such set of questions relates to "waterboarding."

That term is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is, the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.

The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

In this case from the tribunal's records, the victim was a prisoner in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies:

A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.

The United States (like Britain, Australia and other Allies) pursued lower-ranking Japanese war criminals in trials before their own tribunals. As a general rule, the testimony was similar to Nielsen's. Consider this account from a Filipino waterboarding victim:

Q: Was it painful?

A: Not so painful, but one becomes unconscious. Like drowning in the water

(cont'd)
 
Q: Like you were drowning?

A: Drowning -- you could hardly breathe.

Here's the testimony of two Americans imprisoned by the Japanese:

They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.

And from the second prisoner: They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. . . . They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water.

As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.

More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation."

In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."

The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

We know that U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. That's a lesson worth learning. The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history. The law of war is no different. This history should be of value to those who seek to understand what the law is -- as well as what it ought to be.

Evan Wallach, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, teaches the law of war as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and New York Law School.
 
Socrtease said:
Q: Like you were drowning?

A: Drowning -- you could hardly breathe.

Here's the testimony of two Americans imprisoned by the Japanese:

They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.

And from the second prisoner: They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. . . . They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water.

As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.

More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation."

In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."

The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

We know that U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. That's a lesson worth learning. The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history. The law of war is no different. This history should be of value to those who seek to understand what the law is -- as well as what it ought to be.

Evan Wallach, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, teaches the law of war as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and New York Law School.
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Boy, the sound of conservatives rebutting you are deafening.
 
Southern Man said:
Again, the difference between legitimate soldiers protected by international law and unlawful combatants, who are not. *shrug*
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No the difference is that civilized people do not resort to torture, EVER. Would you torture the child of a terrorist in his presence to get him to give up information? If not, why not? I mean to make Americans safe wouldn't you do whatever it took? The law of war says waterboarding is illegal, regardless of what SR tells you we DID prosecute even as far back as 1898 in the Philippines. I was also interested in the fact that people we hold we subject to hypothermia. Do a search on the internet, type in Dachau experiments hypothermia. Read about the Germans that we prosecuted for those.
 
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