Text 22739, 76 rader
Skriven 2006-10-07 14:51:14 av EARL CROASMUN (1:275/311)
     Kommentar till en text av Bob Sakowski
Ärende: Re: Torture
===================
-> > Actually, Bob, your "response" showed no indication that 
-> > you read what I said.  

. . .

-> The so-called "water treatment" was commonly applied. The victim was
-> bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced
-> through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach until he lost
-> consciousness. Pressure was then applied, sometimes by jumping upon his
-> abdomen to force the water out. The usual practice was to revive the
-> victim and successively repeat the process.


You blindly and accidentally made my point for me.  If you HAD read my
earlier post, you would see that your new "response" simply repeats what
I already SAID!  You show that "waterboarding" is designed to make a
person THINK they will ingest water, while there is a sheet of plastic
or cellophane there to prevent that from happening.  And you show, as I
already had done, that Japanese "water torture" involved actually
forcing prisoners to ingest large amounts of water, having them feel the
early stages of drowning, and then jumping off a chair onto their
midsection to force the water back out their mouths and noses and ears
and eyes!  You are drawing the distinction yourself, and yet you refuse
to see it!

Now if you would look back a week or two to the EARLIER unread posts to
you, you will see that I did agree that some forms of waterboarding
would be torture IF the person were in fact partially drowned.  That
would clearly be wrong even without some of the added features of
jumping on the stomach or using vinegar and chili sauce instead of water
or filling the stomach with uncooked rice.

You continue to use these absurd equivalences to Pol Pot and WW II
Japan, when the facts indicate no equivalence at all.  The only way you
can deal with the facts is by ignoring them.  For crying out loud, Bob,
you are even ignoring what YOU are posting!

-> The Japanese indulged in this
-> practice during the entire period of the Pacific War. Methods of
-> torture were employed in all areas so uniformly as to indicate policy
-> both in training and execution.

In a quick search I did not find the actual proceedings from the 1947
trial of Asano (your example), but you have inadvertantly agreed with me
as to the general nature of the Japanese water torture.  Given the above
excerpt from YOUR post, it is reasonable to assume that Asano was
following those uniform methods.  You have refuted your own example.


-> No one has yet come up with any evidence that anyone in the U.S.
-> military or government has officially sanctioned anything close to
-> "torture." The "stress positions" that have been allowed (such as
-> wearing a hood, exposure to heat and cold, and the rarely authorized
-> "waterboarding," which induces a feeling of suffocation) are all
-> psychological techniques designed to break a detainee.

As far as I know, that is correct.  And when actual torture is proven,
the torturer should be prosecuted.  As I pointed out earlier, a local
man was recently convicted of felony assault for hitting an Afghan
detainee with a flashlight and kicking him in the groin.  Several people
got serious prison time for Abu Ghraib.  If there are other instances of
actual torture proven, they should be prosecuted as well.  

Do you understand that distinction, Bob?  You didn't understand it a
week or two ago.  Or maybe you didn't even read it.  You are indicating
that there is no official US policy to torture.  You are indicating that
Japanese interrogators did have an official policy of and methods for
torture.  On one side of your comparison you have people being PUNISHED
for torturing.  On the other you have people who are ORDERED to torture.
And yet you insist that they are the same thing.  Your blindness is
profound.



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