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We prosecuted Japanese soldiers for war crimes after World War II for Waterboarding our soldiers

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NNN0LHI Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 07:30 AM
Original message
We prosecuted Japanese soldiers for war crimes after World War II for Waterboarding our soldiers
Edited on Tue Oct-31-06 07:33 AM by NNN0LHI
http://www.suntimes.com/news/quicktakes/117627,CST-NWS-qt31.article

A torture argument that's all wet

October 31, 2006
BY ZAY N. SMITH Sun-Times Columnist

Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy, co-hosts of "Fox & Friends," making light of those who are against our waterboarding of terrorism suspects:

• • Kilmeade: "I am pro-waterboarding. . . . You put a washcloth on them."

• • Doocy: "You don't dunk 'em in the water -- you just kind of splash some water on 'em."

Is it too late to apologize to the Japanese soldiers we prosecuted for war crimes after World War II when all they did was put a washcloth on our soldiers and splash them?

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acmejack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 07:36 AM
Response to Original message
1. Fifteen years we gave that Japanese fellow.
It was a obviously a serious crime then, but the victors define the crimes, don't they?
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Rene Donating Member (758 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 07:36 AM
Response to Original message
2. Korean War - I remember when it was found out that our captured soldiers had been waterboarded.
There was a world-wide outrage. It's not dunking in water or wash cloth or holding head under water. They lain/tied on a board....tipped back-- head down and water is harshly forced into the nose/mouth.
It's awful
Cheney/Bush/Rumsfield/Rice et all...are disgusting 'not human' beings.
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valerief Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 08:40 AM
Response to Reply #2
8. They don't call it torture for nuttin'. nt
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Coexist Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 09:07 AM
Response to Reply #2
10. .
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niallmac Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 07:49 AM
Response to Original message
3. I have a FABULOUS idea for Fox and Friends!!
What better way to defuse and embarrass the Democrats than actually
SHOW the American people how silly water-boarding is?
Imagine how foolish we DUers would all feel if all these Fox
patriots allowed themselves to experience water boarding live
on television? I may be an army of one but I am going to campaign
that at least one of these guys show us how silly the water boarding
issue is.
I'll bet they all come out of it laughing making fun of us.
Before you think I'm a troll however, I do think there is the
very slight possibility they will come out of it having lost
control of their bowels, crying like babies and needing therapy
for the rest of their lives.
Actually. I wouldn't wish this horror on anyone.
But...if you are going to act the big brave commentator.
Put up or shut up.
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shawn703 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 09:22 AM
Response to Reply #3
12. I like that idea
Actually, why don't they waterboard Cheney and Rove live on TV? Get them to "confess" to 9/11 MIHOP, vote fraud, and anything else we can think of.

Let's see how reliable the Republican talking heads claim waterboarding is after that.
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Warren Stupidity Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 07:50 AM
Response to Original message
4. Gee it doesn't sound very effective.
"You put a washcloth on them" - "NO STOP! I'll TALK, NOT THE WASHCLOTH!"
"you just kind of splash some water on 'em" - "NO MORE SPLASHING! HERE ARE THE NAMES OF ALL OF MY FRIENDS!"

Does anyone call these idiots out on their obvious lies?

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Beausoleil Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 09:19 AM
Response to Reply #4
11. Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR!
You know that's next after the WASHCLOTH! and SPLASHING WATER!
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 07:53 AM
Response to Original message
5. The Pentagon and the Japanese Mengele: The Abominable Dr. Ishii
In the name of military science, we forgave the big shots...



The Pentagon and the Japanese Mengele

The Abominable Dr. Ishii


By CHRISTOPHER REED
Counterpunch Weekend Edition May 27-29, 2006

Editors' note: Under the overall codename Project Paperclip US intelligence agencies made similarly diligent efforts to acquire the research records of Nazi doctors working in the death camps. They also brought over several of the Nazi medical experimenters and set them to work in US military research centers such as Ft. Detrick. The Nazi research was quickly put into play in the field. In 1950, the CIA's Office of Security, headed at the time by Sheffield Edwards, opened a project called Bluebird whose object was to get an individual "to do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation." The first Bluebird operations were conducted in Japan in October 1950 and were reportedly witnessed by Richard Helms, who would later run the Agency. Twenty-five North Korean POWs were given alternating doses of depressants and stimulants. The POWs were shot up with barbitutes, putting them to sleep, then abruptly awoken with injections of amphetamines, put under hypnosis, then interrogated. The operation was, of course, in total contravention of international protocols. The Bluebird interrogations continued through the duration of the Korean War. This history is laid out in detail in our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, Verso, available from our office. AC/JSC.

Everyone has heard of Auschwitz, but what about Pingfan? This Japanese germ warfare headquarters and laboratory in Manchuria, northern China, did not hold as many victims, but atrocities committed there were physically worse than in the Nazi concentration camp, and lasted much longer.

Many people know of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi SS "Angel of Death" and a physician (though not chief medical officer) at Auschwitz from 1943-45. There, he deliberately infected prisoners with deadly diseases and conducted fatal surgeries, often without anesthetic. He escaped and lived in South America undiscovered until after his death at 68 in 1979 in Brazil.

But who has heard of Dr. Shiro Ishii? He was the chief of Japan's well financed, scientifically coordinated and government approved biological warfare program from 1932-45. Ishii rose to general and supervised deliberate infection of thousands of captives with deadly diseases. He also conducted grotesque surgeries, but the unique medical specialty of Ishii and his surgical team were dissections, without anesthetic, on an estimated 3,000 live, conscious humans. In 1959, Ishii, a wealthy man, died peacefully at home in Japan at the age of 67.

SNIP...

General Willoughby and officials of MacArthur's Supreme Command for the Allied Powers in Tokyo had succeeded in suppressing evidence from Ishii and colleagues, but separate inquiries were made by the International Prosecution Section (IPS). Its lawyers gathered evidence including detailed statements from defecting Japanese bio-scientists from Pingfan. The latter testified to human live vivisection, the dumping of lethal germs in Chinese water supplies and food stores, as well as aerial spraying. Yet all was silenced even though the information went to the top.

IPS documents stamped "to be read by the Commander-in-Chief U.S. forces" were sent to President Harry Truman in 1947. No word has ever emerged on what Truman thought or said about this evidence. It is one of many still unknown facts about the Japanese-American conspiracy to conceal the complete account of the Japanese bio-warfare horror.

At Fort Detrick, Maryland, the main U.S. installation for BW, records remain on file of the thousands of tissue slides, preserved organs (some labeled "American") removed from living bodies, with medical schedules and reports on perverse surgical procedures on screaming and writhing human specimens.

General Willoughby listed the five most important items providing "the greatest value in future development of the United States BW program." These included the Japanese scientists' "complete report" of "BW against man" that Willoughby described as "the only information available in world"; "field trials against Chinese" such as Powell described; using animals as deadly bacteria conveyors" ("U.S. has done little work in this field"); and a "summary of the human experiments." The G-2 heard it all.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/reed05272006.html



After WWII, who'd ever thought that the USA would combine science and medicine with torture?
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thingfisher Donating Member (445 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 05:31 PM
Response to Reply #5
13. American use of Nazi
and Japanese war crime "research", "the only information available in world" !? DUH!

Well what was it good for? We didn't keep all those records just for historical preservation did we (it was a well kept secret). American hypocricy... we don't torture, but we don't mind studying the results of other peoples torture (saving us the trouble and moral distress).

What other techniques has the CIA been using in their secret rendition hidaways? Does one even dare to ask?

DAMN! Doesn't it all just make you want to puke!!
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magellan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 08:25 AM
Response to Original message
6. The corporate media whores also described it as "dripping water"
"...dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect's face."

They all like to make it sound like they're coercing information from people by treating them to a day at the spa.

It was TORTURE when it was done to our own, it still is TORTURE, and BushCo are committing prosecutable WAR CRIMES.
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valerief Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 08:38 AM
Response to Original message
7. But that was Post-Pearl Harbor and Pre-9/11. That makes a
difference, because, uh, well, I don't know, but that's what they tell me.
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Solly Mack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Oct-31-06 09:06 AM
Response to Original message
9. America's hypocrisy knows no bounds
and far too many Americans have been conditioned to accept that hypocrisy as "proof" of greatness.

We torture in the interests of freeing people from tyrants.

We strip people of rights in order to preserve freedom and liberty.

lol - and not a happy laugh

And people buy into that thinking.

Downright masterful when you think about it


No matter what crime America engages in, there will always be those who will say, "yeah, but we're still better than so and so because we do this"

As if aid to tsunami victims somehow cancels out torturing and murdering people. I'm just so sure the people in America's secret and not so secret prisons really give a damn that America sends food to Somalia. Yeah, they tell themselves every day, "I'm just so happy to be tortured as long as other people are being fed"


Current reality makes irony pointless










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