AP) Republican presidential candidate John McCain reminded people Thursday that some Japanese were tried and hanged for torturing American prisoners during World War II with techniques that included waterboarding.

"There should be little doubt from American history that we consider that as torture otherwise we wouldn't have tried and convicted Japanese for doing that same thing to Americans," McCain said during a news conference.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/29/politics/main3554687.shtml

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maybe he is not like someone else

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Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime

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

the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials

The United States (like Britain, Australia and other Allies) pursued lower-ranking Japanese war criminals

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does that say war criminals????????????????

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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.

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

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court martialed americans hhhhmmmmmmmmmmm

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The international community recognizes "mock executions" as a form of torture, and many place water boarding in that category. In 1947, a Japanese soldier who used water boarding against a U.S. citizen during World War II was sentenced to 15 years in U.S. prison for committing a war crime.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/water-boarding1.htm

Yea. We should just ask them pretty please with sugar on top. And by the way.. Could you please stop cutting off our heads and video taping it!??? Please. I say if it saves one American life its worth it.

Tell ya what Madison. Lets say your entire family was taken by terrorist and the only way to get info on them was to waterboard the kidnappers. I wonder how you would feel then about it. It must be nice to be an armchair warrior. You pretty much got this all figured out. Hows it feel to get up every morning being all knowing?

Good to see the whole Military madness is still right on track... the unjustified insanity prevails...

Is it in the water you people drink????


I dont know whether to throw up in disgust, or hope that like all the other horrendous regimes in history, this whole sorry mentality will just self destruct, and the rest of the world will be safe again..

Associated Press
updated 6:23 p.m. ET, Tues., May. 11, 2004

GENEVA - Intelligence officers of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq estimated that 70 percent to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake, the Red Cross said in a report that was disclosed Monday, and Red Cross observers witnessed U.S. officers mistreating Abu Ghraib prisoners by keeping them naked in total darkness in empty cells.

Abuse was, “in some cases, tantamount to torture,” it said.

The report supports allegations by the International Committee of the Red Cross that abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers was broad and “not individual acts” — contrary to President Bush’s contention that the mistreatment “was the wrongdoing of a few.”

The report said “high-value detainees” were singled out for special mistreatment. It did not specify them, but The Associated Press has learned that they included some of the 55 top officials in former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime who were named in a deck of playing cards given to troops.

“Since June 2003, over 100 ‘high-value detainees’ have been held for nearly 23 hours a day in strict solitary confinement in small concrete cells devoid of daylight,” the report said.

“ICRC delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators,” according to the confidential report.

Immediate explanation sought
The delegates saw in October how detainees at Abu Ghraib were kept “completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness,” the report said.

“Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities,” it said. “The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was ‘part of the process.’ ”

This apparently meant that detainees were progressively given clothing, bedding, lighting and other items in exchange for cooperation, it said.

The report said investigators found evidence supporting prisoners’ allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation, including burns, bruises and other injuries.
The 24-page document, which the Red Cross confirmed as authentic after it was published Monday by The Wall Street Journal, said the abuses took place primarily during the interrogation stage by military intelligence. Once the detainees were moved to regular prison facilities, the abuses typically stopped, it said.

The report said some abuses were “tantamount to torture,” including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of “imminent execution.”

“These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from persons who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an ‘intelligence value.’ ”

The agency alleged that arrests tended to follow a pattern.

“Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property,” the report said.

“Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people,” it said.

“Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles.”

It said some coalition military intelligence officers estimated that “between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake. They also attributed the brutality of some arrests to the lack of proper supervision of battle group units.”



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

What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty. They admit that the majority are arrested / detained in error.


So all should then be tortured on the 'chance' they may have a shred of knowledge?

This is known as the "Ticking Bomb Scenario"

The distorting and misleading nature of the scenario is in part due to the fact that it is most often presented in a manner that keeps the many of its assumptions hidden. Once exposed, it becomes clear that the scenario is either wildly unrealistic or that any exception to the prohibition of torture would be much more widespread than the proponent of the scenario originally suggested. The scenario thereby manipulates moral and ethical judgment by obscuring the true moral cost of tolerating any act of torture. Critics emphasize the similarities between the absolute prohibition and taboo of torture, and those that apply to other international crimes such as slavery and genocide. Critics also emphasize that international law is unequivocal: the prohibition of torture is subject to no exception of any kind. Every act of torture is an international crime. In the words of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, quoting a leading US case, "the torturer has become, like the pirate and the slave trader before him, hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind."

For instance, it is asked whether torture would be limited to suspects, or whether one could torture the family and friends of a suspect to make him compliant. According to John Yoo (former Justice Department official who wrote memos justifying President Bush's policies on torture) this would be legally permissible, including crushing the testicles of the person’s child to obtain information. If we imagine that officials might attempt to justify torture of people whose phone numbers happened to be in a suspect's mobile phone or agenda-book, in their desperation to find useful information, the range of possible victims of "ticking bomb" torture becomes much wider.

Another point is the notorious unreliability of the information gathered, e.g. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The biggest objection is the notion that innocent suspects could be subjected to torture as a result of this "the end justifies the means" debate.



Starting with Les Centurions, fictional stories have had the effect of making torture palatable to the general public and its perpetrators. Works of fiction, such as the television series 24, often rely on ticking time bomb scenarios for dramatic effect. One of the shows' creators stated:

“Most terrorism experts will tell you that the ‘ticking time bomb’ situation never occurs in real life, or very rarely. But on our show it happens every week.”

Also, the show uses the same techniques that are used by the US against alleged Al-Qaeda suspects. U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and others, objected to the central theme of the show—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—as it had an adverse effect on the training of actual American soldiers by advocating unethical and illegal behavior. As Finnegan said:

“The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ”

He continued,

“The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

Joe Navarro, one of the F.B.I.’s top experts in questioning techniques, told The New Yorker,

“Only a psychopath can torture and be unaffected. You don’t want people like that in your organization. They are untrustworthy, and tend to have grotesque other problems.”

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


More on Ticking Bomb Scenario

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:xewPlZxDs0EJ:www.apt.ch/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,281/Itemid,59/lang,en/+torture+ticking+bomb+scenario&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4

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

A dedicated terrorist will hold out either way knowing that time is on his side as the 'bomb' ticks away.

hhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

sure are some strange things here

it is ok for the united stated to

do things now that the

that they (the u s)

have imprisoned and executed others for doing

and even court martialed their own service men

in the past for doing

but now it is ok hhhhhmmmmmm interesting

maybe they should give all those court martialed

damages and back pay

and pay the person imprisoned for 15 years

but kinda hard to bring the others back to life tho

how much should they pay for those lives

i bet they would say that it was wrong to do it

if it came to that

So what are you all doin in here. Without the thousand word essay please. lol

insert head scratching emoticon here

lucky for you there are people out there who are ready to do things that you can't stomach....as nice as you want to be this world can be a very cruel place and your that marine isn't your enemy...your worst enemy is yourself...you ought to be thanking that marine...

Clueless here. So I will go somewhere else.

i thank all the service personnel

but that does not excuse a double standard

when it comes to policy

and you wonder why

so many hate the states

Why the f*ck is this called say no to snowboarding. Why muffle the fact.

This is a political realm and you are going to bash just like the religious threads.

lmao rolling on the floor. Thinking to myself. Hiding behind a curtain of threads will get you no where.

Go to F*cking Washington and speak your peace.

I just got in the mood to b*

where is my 1 1/2 water hose when i need it

That is so damn funny. Now your talking. I guess that is the only way I can get attention.

you can't deal with the terrorists using our standards and the terrorists are not caused by the US...the terrorists are trying to wipe out infidels.. they blame the US as a propaganda ploy and reading some of the posts in here they know it's working.

You are feeding the very issue you argue about.

Smile and relax hun, You will survive Newbie Kingdom. Still laughing my a$$ off

maybe if the united states did not hold itself to a differnt

set of rules then they would not hate the united states so much


do i like the terrorist ideas and ways no

did they start thi issue yes

has the united states ever been safe from them no

the=is started when the united states became a country

and one of our ships was seized in the middle east region

does this excuse the fact that the united states says

one thing

and then

does something else no it does not

and yes i realize it is the type of govt we have

but men of honor that take high office

would honor the word of those b4 them

They need no excuse and people do not need and should not know everything the gov is up to for two reasons. One, people would be horrified that things that need to be done in order to protect the world as we know it...two, you can't fill the enemy in on when and what you plan to do and how your going to do it...