Tuesday, October 30, 2007

On the issue of waterboarding...

What I don't understand on the topic of is waterboarding torture or not is demonstrated by this part of a Washington Post article, Attorney General Nominee Sends Letter to Dems:

Waterboarding generally involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face or mouth with a cloth and pouring water over his face to create the sensation of drowning, according to human rights groups. The practice dates at least to the Spanish Inquisition, and has been prosecuted as torture in U.S. military courts since the Spanish-American War.


Note the text in bold which is my emphasis, if it has been prosecuted as torture in U.S. Military Courts meaning it would be torture for this to be done to a U.S. soldier or for a U.S. soldier to do, then it would be torture to do to anyone...

As early as 1901, a U.S. court martial sentenced Major Edwin Glenn to 10 years of hard labor for subjecting a suspected insurgent in the Philippines to the "water cure." After World War II, U.S. military commissions successfully prosecuted as war criminals several Japanese soldiers who subjected American prisoners to waterboarding. A U.S. army officer was court-martialed in February 1968 for helping to waterboard a prisoner in Vietnam.

Additional information on Major Edwin Glenn:

In May, 1901 an American soldier was murdered by the fiancé' of a woman he had assaulted. In retaliation, Capt. Andrew S. Rowan,[11] the soldier's commander, ordered the burning of the town of Jagna. This infuriated the population of Bohol and reignited the insurrection.

At first Rowan was suspended from duty for this decision. But eventually support for burning villages increased in the military command. The burnings continued, usually as a reaction to collaboration. In addition, livestock was raped and prominent civilians tortured. Water cure was a commonly used torture technique. By the end of the fighting, American troops had burned 16-20 villages. Major Edwin F. Glenn, who had personally approved the tortures, was later courts-martialed for the crime.

Almost sounds as if though we have become better from a technology standpoint at killing people, things have not changed when it comes to revenge and torture...

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