WWII poster

[Iriemon]

The only obvious point is that there is a difference between the acts of some during war and approved national policy.

Don't be obtuse.

FDR would have done what Bush did or worse, bringing up WWII memories as a comparison does not work.

What sources are there that the US officially approved waterboarding or torture as forms of interrogation of prisoners?

 

[Iriemon]

In a recent journal essay, Judge Evan Wallach, a member of the U.S. Court of International Trade and an adjunct professor in the law of war, writes that the testimony from American soldiers about this form of torture was gruesome and convincing. A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps.

That is all true. But nothing I've seen shows any were hung solely for waterboarding.

I cannot find particulars about what forms of torture the Japanese were charged with either.

In fact the seem to have charged them for any form of torture without bothering to describe it.

(See emboldened from source)

In the promotion and accomplishment of that scheme, these defendants, taking advantage of their power and their official positions and their own personal prestige and influence, intended to and did plan, prepare, initiate, or wage aggressive war

--30--

against the United States of America, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Commonwealth of Australia, Canada, the Republic fo France, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, India, the Commonwealth of the Philippines, and other peaceful nations, in violation of international law, as well as in violation of sacred treaty commitments, obligations and assurances; such plan contemplated and carried out the violation of recognized customs and conventions of war by murdering, maiming and ill-treating prisoners of war, civilian internees, and persons on the high seas, denying them adequate food, shelter, clothing, medical care, or other appropriate attention, forcing them to labour under inhumane conditions, and subjecting them to indignities; exploit to Japan's benefit the manpower and economic resources of the vanquished nations, plundering public and private property, wantonly destroying cities, towns and villages beyond any justification of military necessity; perpetrate mass murder, rape, pillage, brigandage, torture, and other barbaric cruelties upon the helpless civilian population of the overrun countries; increase the influence and control of the military and naval groups over Japanese government officials and agencies; psychologically prepare Japanese public opinion for aggressive warfare by establishing so-called Assistance Societies, teaching nationalistic policies of expansion, disseminating war propaganda, and exercising strict
​

--31--

control over the press and radio; set up "puppet" governments in conquered countries; conclude military alliances with Germany and Italy to enhance by military might Japan's programme of expansion.

Therefore, the above named Nations by their undersigned representatives, duly appointed to represent their respective Governments in the investigation of the charges against and the prosecution of the Major War Criminals, pursuant to the Potsdam Declaration of the 20th [sic] July, 1945, and the Instrument of Surrender of the 2ndSeptember 1945, and the Charter of the Tribunal, hereby accuse as guilty, in the respects hereinafter set forth, of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, and of Common Plans or Conspiracies to commit these Crimes, all as defined in the Charter of the Tribunal, and accordingly name as Defendants in this cause and as indicated on the Counts hereinafter set out in which their names respectively appear, all the above-named individuals.
​

I cited articles where prosecution of waterboard was specified in this post:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/1175155-post446.html

 

[Gunny]

A poster from WWII.

Not really politically correct today in some circles.

Nope. But dishonestly defining torture to suit your partisan hackery most certainly must be welcome in YOUR circle.

 

[Iriemon]

A poster from WWII.

Not really politically correct today in some circles.

Nope. But dishonestly defining torture to suit your partisan hackery most certainly must be welcome in YOUR circle.

Sorry, it wasn't MY circle that decided that warboarding was torture constituting a war crime punishable by 15 years hard labor. That was the US Govt in the Japanese war crime trials. And as someone else pointed out, the Phillipines and Viet Nam also.

 

[Yurt]

stop saying that waterboarding by the japanese was the same as the recent waterboarding...it is NOT true. further, it was NOT their only crime, stop creating false hoods.

 

[Iriemon]

stop saying that waterboarding by the japanese was the same as the recent waterboarding...it is NOT true. further, it was NOT their only crime,

For some, it was their only war crime.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/1175155-post446.html

Chase J. Nielsen, one of the U.S. airmen who flew in the Doolittle raid following the attack on Pearl Harbor, was subjected to waterboarding by his Japanese captors.[69] At their trial for war crimes following the war, he testified "Well, I was put on my back on the floor with my arms and legs stretched out, one guard holding each limb. The towel was wrapped around my face and put across my face and water poured on. They poured water on this towel until I was almost unconscious from strangulation, then they would let up until I'd get my breath, then they'd start over again… I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death."[29]

Waterboarding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How exactly was that different than what our waterboarding did?

stop creating false hoods

Folks can decide for themselves whose creating falsehoods.

 

[Yukon]

GaySgt,

Americans did nothing wrong during WWII. Americans are perfect. Right?

PolitiFact | History supports McCain's stance on waterboarding

we executed Japanese for waterboarding after WWII

Prove it. Prove we executed Japanese officers just for water boarding, then prove that their method was the same as ours and that they had competent medical people standing by to ENSURE no harm came to the prisoner.

Other wise I am tired of a story that provides no evidence.

 

[Skull Pilot]

GaySgt,

Americans did nothing wrong during WWII. Americans are perfect. Right?

PolitiFact | History supports McCain's stance on waterboarding

we executed Japanese for waterboarding after WWII

Prove it. Prove we executed Japanese officers just for water boarding, then prove that their method was the same as ours and that they had competent medical people standing by to ENSURE no harm came to the prisoner.

Other wise I am tired of a story that provides no evidence.

not perfect but better than ******* Canadians

 

[SW2SILVERQUASI]

PolitiFact | History supports McCain's stance on waterboarding

we executed Japanese for waterboarding after WWII

Really? Given all the other atrocities they committed, this is singularly astounding claim. Perhaps, on a good day when they felt the joy of life in their veins, would they have been so nice as to just waterboard their victims. Otherwise, they starved them, worked them to death, raped them and shot them. Amazingly stupid and insensitive remark.

 

[Bullypulpit]

PolitiFact | History supports McCain's stance on waterboarding

we executed Japanese for waterboarding after WWII

Prove it. Prove we executed Japanese officers just for water boarding, then prove that their method was the same as ours and that they had competent medical people standing by to ENSURE no harm came to the prisoner.

Other wise I am tired of a story that provides no evidence.

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. - Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime

And, as stated at Politifact.com, some were hanged, some recieved long prison sentences.

Gunny, stop...please...Watching you defend torture is like watching an old friend who is too far gone into dementia to realize that he's soiled himself in public.

 

[Skull Pilot]

it used to be illegal to sell beer on Sunday too.

So people were prosecuted for waterboarding when it was illegal. At some point, someone in government decided it was legal.

laws change

 

[Bullypulpit]

it used to be illegal to sell beer on Sunday too.

So people were prosecuted for waterboarding when it was illegal. At some point, someone in government decided it was legal.

laws change

That's just it...The laws haven't changed. That you're reduced to citing alcohol sales laws and "Blue" laws shows just how intellectually bankrupt your continued arguments in support of torture are.

 

[Skull Pilot]

it used to be illegal to sell beer on Sunday too.

So people were prosecuted for waterboarding when it was illegal. At some point, someone in government decided it was legal.

laws change

That's just it...The laws haven't changed. That you're reduced to citing alcohol sales laws and "Blue" laws shows just how intellectually bankrupt your continued arguments in support of torture are.

YAWN

I do not consider waterboarding following the CIA enhanced interrogation procedures as torture. There is no lasting harm done and the person's life is never at risk.

Beating the bottoms of one's feet with a cane, contortion of joints causing dislocation or broken bones, confinement in the dark with no food or water for days on end,malnutrition, being forced to wallow in one's own excrement, bamboo under the fingernails, electric shock etc.... Now that's torture.

 

[Bullypulpit]

it used to be illegal to sell beer on Sunday too.

So people were prosecuted for waterboarding when it was illegal. At some point, someone in government decided it was legal.

laws change

That's just it...The laws haven't changed. That you're reduced to citing alcohol sales laws and "Blue" laws shows just how intellectually bankrupt your continued arguments in support of torture are.

YAWN

I do not consider waterboarding following the CIA enhanced interrogation procedures as torture. There is no lasting harm done and the person's life is never at risk.

Beating the bottoms of one's feet with a cane, contortion of joints causing dislocation or broken bones, confinement in the dark with no food or water for days on end,malnutrition, being forced to wallow in one's own excrement, bamboo under the fingernails, electric shock etc.... Now that's torture.

You opinion is irrelevant. It's settled case law.

 

[Skull Pilot]

That's just it...The laws haven't changed. That you're reduced to citing alcohol sales laws and "Blue" laws shows just how intellectually bankrupt your continued arguments in support of torture are.

YAWN

I do not consider waterboarding following the CIA enhanced interrogation procedures as torture. There is no lasting harm done and the person's life is never at risk.

Beating the bottoms of one's feet with a cane, contortion of joints causing dislocation or broken bones, confinement in the dark with no food or water for days on end,malnutrition, being forced to wallow in one's own excrement, bamboo under the fingernails, electric shock etc.... Now that's torture.

You opinion is irrelevant. It's settled case law.

Again YAWN

 

[Iriemon]

it used to be illegal to sell beer on Sunday too.

So people were prosecuted for waterboarding when it was illegal. At some point, someone in government decided it was legal.

laws change

That's just it...The laws haven't changed. That you're reduced to citing alcohol sales laws and "Blue" laws shows just how intellectually bankrupt your continued arguments in support of torture are.

YAWN

I do not consider waterboarding following the CIA enhanced interrogation procedures as torture. There is no lasting harm done and the person's life is never at risk.

From the CIA memo: "...the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death, ..."

Interrogation Techniques - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

 

[submarinepainter]

That's just it...The laws haven't changed. That you're reduced to citing alcohol sales laws and "Blue" laws shows just how intellectually bankrupt your continued arguments in support of torture are.

YAWN

I do not consider waterboarding following the CIA enhanced interrogation procedures as torture. There is no lasting harm done and the person's life is never at risk.

From the CIA memo: "...the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death, ..."

Interrogation Techniques - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

GaySgt,

Americans did nothing wrong during WWII. Americans are perfect. Right?

PolitiFact | History supports McCain's stance on waterboarding

we executed Japanese for waterboarding after WWII

Prove it. Prove we executed Japanese officers just for water boarding, then prove that their method was the same as ours and that they had competent medical people standing by to ENSURE no harm came to the prisoner.

Other wise I am tired of a story that provides no evidence.

We are perfect .

 

[Zoom-boing]

PolitiFact | History supports McCain's stance on waterboarding

we executed Japanese for waterboarding after WWII

Prove it. Prove we executed Japanese officers just for water boarding, then prove that their method was the same as ours and that they had competent medical people standing by to ENSURE no harm came to the prisoner.

Other wise I am tired of a story that provides no evidence.

I was wondering about this, as I see it posted as fact on many threads. I came across this; the Japanese version of water boarding and the CIA's version of water boarding don't seem the same to me.

Japanese water boarding:

Waterboarding was the only torture he blocked out

In 1942, British army signalman Lomax, 23, was taken prisoner in Singapore by the Japanese. He would not be released until four days after the Japanese surrender on Sept. 2, 1945. I do not know how he survived. He does not know how he survived. Most readers will be amazed that he wished to.

Lomax was put on display, starved, kept in a barracks with snakes and foot-long centipedes, stored in a Guantanamo-style kennel, made to work almost unto death, kept in constant fear of execution, beaten as "scorching liquid pain seared through [his] body," kept naked, baked in the sun, made to clean his captors' toilets, left untreated with scabies that covered him with a yellow scab of pus that ate all his skin except his face and fingertips, and so on.

He is matter of fact when he writes about it. But when he comes to waterboarding — it was done during his interrogation about a secret radio built by the PoWs — 50 years later, he remembers every moment but one.

'The sensation of drowning, on dry land'

It began with a Cheney-style "dunking" so bad that his brain blocked out the memory. He was told later by a witness that he was taken to a bathroom with a big metal tub and his head was shoved under the water again and again.

There was an interpreter present who would take Lomax's pulse periodically to ensure he was still alive and available to endure further agony.

Lomax was then tied down on a bench, even though his arms had already been broken. The torturer came back with a hosepipe.

And this is waterboarding:

"He directed the full flow of the now-gushing pipe onto my nostrils and mouth.… Water poured down my windpipe and throat and filled my lungs and stomach. The torrent was unimaginably choking. This is the sensation of drowning, on dry land, on a hot dry afternoon. Your humanity bursts from within you as you gag and choke. I tried very hard to will unconsciousness but no relief came."

The beating and the interrogation continued. "I had nothing to say: I was beyond invention. So they turned on the tap again, and again there was that nausea of rising water from inside my bodily cavity."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_mallick/20061106.html


CIA detention center water boarding

1.3 Suffocation by Water

In each case, the person to be suffocated was strapped to a tilting bed and a cloth
was placed over face, covering the nose and mouth. Water was then placed
continuously onto the cloth saturating it and blocking off any air so that the person could
not breathe. This form of suffocation induced a form of panic and the acute impression
that the person was about to die. In at least one case, this was accompanied by
incontinence of the urine. At a point chosen by the interrogator the cloth was
removed and the bed was rotated in a head-up and vertical position so that the person
was left hanging by the straps used to secure him to the bed. The procedure was
repeated at least twice, if not more often, during a single interrogation session. Moreover,
this repetitive suffocation was inflicted on the detainees during subsequent sessions.
The above procedure is the so called "water boarding" technique.

http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf (page 11)

 

[Iriemon]

PolitiFact | History supports McCain's stance on waterboarding

we executed Japanese for waterboarding after WWII

Prove it. Prove we executed Japanese officers just for water boarding, then prove that their method was the same as ours and that they had competent medical people standing by to ENSURE no harm came to the prisoner.

Other wise I am tired of a story that provides no evidence.

I was wondering about this, as I see it posted as fact on many threads. I came across this; the Japanese version of water boarding and the CIA's version of water boarding don't seem the same to me.

Japanese water boarding:

Waterboarding was the only torture he blocked out

In 1942, British army signalman Lomax, 23, was taken prisoner in Singapore by the Japanese. He would not be released until four days after the Japanese surrender on Sept. 2, 1945. I do not know how he survived. He does not know how he survived. Most readers will be amazed that he wished to.

Lomax was put on display, starved, kept in a barracks with snakes and foot-long centipedes, stored in a Guantanamo-style kennel, made to work almost unto death, kept in constant fear of execution, beaten as "scorching liquid pain seared through [his] body," kept naked, baked in the sun, made to clean his captors' toilets, left untreated with scabies that covered him with a yellow scab of pus that ate all his skin except his face and fingertips, and so on.

He is matter of fact when he writes about it. But when he comes to waterboarding — it was done during his interrogation about a secret radio built by the PoWs — 50 years later, he remembers every moment but one.

'The sensation of drowning, on dry land'

It began with a Cheney-style "dunking" so bad that his brain blocked out the memory. He was told later by a witness that he was taken to a bathroom with a big metal tub and his head was shoved under the water again and again.

There was an interpreter present who would take Lomax's pulse periodically to ensure he was still alive and available to endure further agony.

Lomax was then tied down on a bench, even though his arms had already been broken. The torturer came back with a hosepipe.

And this is waterboarding:

"He directed the full flow of the now-gushing pipe onto my nostrils and mouth.… Water poured down my windpipe and throat and filled my lungs and stomach. The torrent was unimaginably choking. This is the sensation of drowning, on dry land, on a hot dry afternoon. Your humanity bursts from within you as you gag and choke. I tried very hard to will unconsciousness but no relief came."

The beating and the interrogation continued. "I had nothing to say: I was beyond invention. So they turned on the tap again, and again there was that nausea of rising water from inside my bodily cavity."

CBC News: Analysis & Viewpoint: Heather Mallick - Stand on Guard


CIA detention center water boarding

1.3 Suffocation by Water

In each case, the person to be suffocated was strapped to a tilting bed and a cloth
was placed over face, covering the nose and mouth. Water was then placed
continuously onto the cloth saturating it and blocking off any air so that the person could
not breathe. This form of suffocation induced a form of panic and the acute impression
that the person was about to die. In at least one case, this was accompanied by
incontinence of the urine. At a point chosen by the interrogator the cloth was
removed and the bed was rotated in a head-up and vertical position so that the person
was left hanging by the straps used to secure him to the bed. The procedure was
repeated at least twice, if not more often, during a single interrogation session. Moreover,
this repetitive suffocation was inflicted on the detainees during subsequent sessions.
The above procedure is the so called "water boarding" technique.

http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf (page 11)

There were aparenlty many versions of waterboarding that were used by the Japanese.

PoliticalChic brought to my attention this Media Matters articles that identifies several variations that the Japanese use for waterboarding.

Media Matters - NRO's Hemingway gets history wrong in accusing Begala of botching facts

Regardless of the variations, the US Govt was very clear that all forms of waterboarding were considered torture and a war crime.

 

[SW2SILVERQUASI]

Water boarding. As opposed to decapitations, crashing planes , mass murder, suicidal Muslims and all that, it all blurs into the same thing, after a while. Well, to some of you dumb PC deluded ASSES it may seem like the only thing on the RADAR to worry about, Why is that? Water boarding ? Any of you ever get waterboarded lately? NO? Why worry about it?