Yes, We Did Execute Japanese Soldiers for Waterboarding American POWs

[Man from Pickens]

It stuns me that we are still having a debate, as a country, over whether or not what the Bush Administration did to detainees in the war on terror was actually torture. I would hope that this helps settle things. The fact-checking outfit called PolitiFact confirms that a McCain statement from 2007, dredged up recently by Paul Begala, is accurate:

"I forgot to mention last night that following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding," [McCain] told reporters at a campaign event.

....
You can argue that the techniques used by Americans on detainees were necessary and, because of the OLC memos, legal. I would disagree with you, but you could plausibly make that argument. What you cannot do any longer is pretend that those techniques do not meet the definition of torture that America has used in the past.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/04/yes-we-did-execute-japanese-soldiers-waterboarding-american-pows

There you have it. "Waterboarding" was such a despicable act as to classify it as a war crime deserving execution. Anyone who says it's not torture is an ignoramus at best, with the other end of the scale being "genuine war criminal".

[spanone]

1. i hear cheney arguing it's not torture. this question was settled long, long ago.

k&r...

[gordianot]

2. Corporate media hacks ignore the history of waterboarding.

Just one time I would like to see the advocates of waterboarding defend why American waterboarding is not a capital offense.

[Agnosticsherbet]

3. January 21, 1968: US Soldier Convicted of Waterboarding North Vietnamese Prisoner

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a012168usconvicted#a012168usconvicted

Until the legal decision by the Bush Administration, Waterboarding was considered torture and a crime under the UCMJ.

[Egnever]

7. Interesting

I would have to assume then that that guy has a pardon coming his way.

[TheKentuckian]

4. Of course we did. The pretense on this subject is wicked and highly delusional.

[former9thward]

5. The U.S. used waterboarding in Vietnam.

U.S. soldier in Vietnam supervises the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier.

No one was hanged in Toyko for simply waterboarding someone.

In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

"All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.

http://www.npr.org/2007/11/03/15886834/waterboarding-a-tortured-history

[Raine1967]

20. and he was convicted… nt.

[former9thward]

24. No, he was court marshaled.

We don't know what the verdict was or what the sentence was. Also he unlucky enough to have his picture taken and put on a major paper. What about all the rest?

[cascadiance]

23. For torture in Vietnam, it's worth studying the "Vietnam Project" and Stan Sheinbaum...

Rent the documentary "Citizen Stan" to see how he started his prolific life that was a part of things like the Pentagon Papers, working for the welfare of Greek imprisoned leader Papandreou, the Israeli and Yasser Arafat summit, and the L.A. riots after Rodney King, etc.

http://www.citizenstan.com/

But Sheinbaum started leading the Vietnam project at Michigan State University, which was infiltrated by the CIA, so that members of the project were helping train the South Vietnamese to torture the Viet Cong. A Ramparts article which Sheinbaum wrote in after he left the project documents this earlier in the 60's.

http://www.namebase.org/campus/msu.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stanley-k-sheinbaum/vietnam-project-michigan-state-university_b_1973274.html

Duped by the CIA

...

"CIA? What CIA people?"

He seemed perplexed. "The ones on the fifth floor, Professor Sheinbaum."

It became clear to me after a few more discreet, and not-so-discreet, probing interviews that the "policing" part of the project in Vietnam proper was being run by the CIA, and that they were dealing in counter-insurgency, torture, intimidation of the populace, police undercover infiltration of Buddhist organizations and government control of the media and pro-government propaganda. I was shocked. We were a cover for the United States government to prop up an anti-democratic South Vietnamese regime.

Okay, keeping it real, at that time in my life I honestly might have been able to accept some of that activity "to stop the Communist threat," but I could not come to terms with the fact that our supposedly college-administered aid project was working secretly with the CIA to create and manage a puppet government under the cover of Michigan State University. This seemed to me to be against the very principles we were supposed to be promoting.

...

After Sheinbaum had left the project and the Vietnam Project was shut down, MSU kept their USAID efforts going in Southeast Asia, and my dad took us over there at that time working for them, and I didn't know about this history until much later when I saw that documentary. I've even had a phone conversation on this with Mr. Sheinbaum in recent years.

And note in these articles that after this project and our living over their too, MSU president John Hannah was "rewarded" with being made head of USAID in those days, so underhanded political favors happened then too.

[Egnever]

6. You will have to excuse me if I don't take Mcinsane as an expert on American history.

Having said that waterboarding without a doubt is torture and people should be prosecuted for it.

[bvar22]

8. "Mcinsane" knows more about torture ...

...than you or I will ever know.

[former9thward]

13. True.

And twice I have been to Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi where he was held. Once (in 1992) while it was still a working prison and I saw the despicable conditions he and the others had been held in.

In this matter however words matter. McCain's statement says "Among the charges ...". That is true. Some were executed who had the charge of waterboarding among others far worse -- such as summary executions. No one was hanged for waterboarding alone.

[Egnever]

21. That doesn't mean he knows our history.

Or are you saying because I ate a quarter pounder I am an expert on how Mcdonalds became a corporation.

He can certainly speak with authority on what a person goes through when tortured, but this clown is wrong all the time about so many things. Here he is being all kinds of wrong on recent history.

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/wait-mccain-was-wrong-on-iraq-yup-279981123648

You want to take history lessons from him be my guest I am going to take a big pass.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

9. I was told by a eyewitness that we executed hundreds

of Japanese Soldiers at the edge of a high cliff overlooking the ocean, rather than take them POW.

[easychoice]

18. I was told by my uncle.The soldiers were told to lose them.

My uncle used to take them in the jungle shoot his gun in the air and they would run.
My uncle wasn't the only vet who told me that.

[mindwalker_i]

10. Yeah but that was different

[countryjake]

11. The comments for that piece at MotherJones are eye-popping. n/t

[Octafish]

12. Japanese Methods of Prisoner of War Interrogation

PDF: http://6thinfantry.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/JapaneseTortureTechniques.pdf

[zappaman]

14. Kick and Rec!

[trof]

15. I've heard jokes about 'The Chinese Water Torture'.

This brings it into perspective.

[ashling]

16. But that was so 1948 - SARCASM

and this is so post 9/11

[annominous]

17. The redefining of "torture" by Bushco was absolutely Orwellian.

Besides, now we are to call these rebranded activities EITs instead. And that redefining is happening in the here and now.

The fact that so many Americans willingly embrace these redefinitions and word games when done by "their guy" because, "hey, 911 was torture too" is stunning. Saddening. Terrifying.

The use of torture is forbidden by our Constitution.

[laserhaas]

19. archaic banter about draconian methods

Just wait until Mitt,ns is POTUS

Waterboarding and 12 yr old youth huntings will be weekly entertainment allotments training for the annual purge sacrifice to the gonnabe g0d one day.

And Cheney will be the USAG

after the new black op of Cuba upon Miami

[bobclark86]

22. Not exactly because of waterboarding...

Tokyo War Crimes Trial

Count: Offence
1: As leaders, organizers, instigators, or accomplices in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to wage wars of aggression, and war or wars in violation of international law
27: Waging unprovoked war against China
29: Waging aggressive war against the United States
31: Waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth (Crown colonies and protectorates of the United Kingdom in the Far East and South Asia, Australia and New Zealand)
32: Waging aggressive war against the Netherlands (Dutch East Indies)
33: Waging aggressive war against France (French Indochina)
35, 36: Waging aggressive war against the USSR
54: Ordered, authorised, and permitted inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and others
55: Deliberately and recklessly disregarded their duty to take adequate steps to prevent atrocities

"Waterboarding" was such a despicable act as to classify it as a war crime deserving execution.

Saying we hung Tojo for waterboarding is a gross misstatement and kind of an insult to the memories of the millions who died in the Far East.

Is waterboarding torture? Yes. Duh. But it's plenty horrible without trying to pin Japanese war crimes on it. This kind of hyperbole makes me ill. Just as much as the tea bagger calling the president Kenyan -- there's plenty for everyone to criticize without getting into lies and hyperbole.

[AnalystInParadise]

25. We also won the war

not defending the practice or the executions, but that is the world we live in, the victors determine who was just and who was unjust. And while we are not winning the GWOT anytime soon, we also are not losing it in sense where other nations are in a position to demand the same of our torturers. So.........in the absence of a compelling authority that would punish our torturers, they will in fact get away with it. Both parties in our country have seen to that outcome.