American history with torture -

[ashling]

After we "liberated" the Phillipines from Spain we refused to recognize Filipino claims to independence and instead demanded that Spain cede the Philipines to the U.s. Aguinaldo, the leader of the Filipino revolution had been inspired by the U.S. as a model republic and had greeted the U.S. soldiers as liberators, but now were kept from entering Manilla. After a U.S. sentry fired on some Filipino soldiers in 1899 a second war erupted.

About 4,000 U.S. soldiers died in the fighting, and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos. Within the first year of the war, stories started being sent back in soldiers letters home about atrocities by U.S. forces, many of these letters were published in local U.S. papers.
From the Omaha World-Herald, May 1900:


Now this is the way we give them the water cure ... we lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don't give up, pour in another pail. They swel up like toads. I'll tell you it is a terrible torture.



another source tells of stepping on the stomach to expell the water and doing it again.