US Interrogators From WWII Blast Bush's Policies Of Torture

[kpete]

(WaPo) A group of US interrogators from WWII decry the current policies of torture, saying they didn't need it against the Nazis.


Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII
Interrogators Fought 'Battle of Wits'

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 6, 2007; Page A01

For six decades, they held their silence.

................

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

............

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I feel like the military is using us to say, 'We did spooky stuff then, so it's okay to do it now,' " said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.

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more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502492_2.html?hpid=topnews

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[tanyev]

2. ...

:patriot:

[fasttense]

3. I believe the US was involved in torture before bush.

The CIA taught foreign military and police how to torture using the CIA produced Handbook "Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation". The manual is dated 1963 and was released by the CIA after "The Baltimore Sun" freedom of information threatened suits and nine years. The handbook is a 128 page secret manual on the "interrogation of resistant sources".

In 1988, the New York Times ran an article about how Honduras's notoriously brutal Battalion 3-16 was taken to Texas and trained by the CIA on torture.

If the US was not conducting torture, how come they were training other people on it? No, the US was torturing but it was covert, secret, deniable and illegal.

The manual itself warns on page 2 that its techniques carry "the grave risk of later lawsuits."

What had previously been performed by proxy, with enough distance to deny knowledge, is now performed directly and openly defended. That is what makes the bushes different, after 9/11, the bushes demanded the right to torture without shame.

Now, torture is out in the open, without fear of prosecution. And that makes all the difference in the world in how often and how severe torture has become.

Most of my information came from Naomi Klein's new book "The Shock Doctrine".

[w4rma]

4. renditions started under Clinton. (nt)