It has everything to do with my response to Velocity’s statement about using techniques for special cases. 3 people were waterboarded.
Oh, goody, it was reserved for “special” cases! We only degraded ourselves into slobbering savagery in “special” cases. And we have that on the solid and reliable testimony of persons with an spotless record of candor and integrity!
Feeling so much better now.
“Special” cases, over 20% of which were wrong and tortured anyway.
Seems that your source put an extra 0 on the number, until told otherwise it is more likely that the history site I quoted used the Chinese as the source too.
This all comes down to who is defining torture. This is a medical procedure that has little discomfort involved. Wow, the detainees are kept hydrated and have clean colons. BFD. What’s next on the scale of horrors? Lack of air conditioning when it gets hot? No lemons in their tea? Substandard soccer balls on their $750,000 soccer field? Qurans printed on recycled paper?
I’d like to home in on that part, if you have the actual citation. By “wrong”, does that mean persons who were only marginally connected, or not even remotely connected? (“Innocent” I believe is the precise terminology.)
How did such people get into such a ghastly predicament? Somebody turned them in, seems most likely. Who? And perhaps more importantly, why? And does it matter, once we have reduced ourselves to vicious and vengeful beasts, does innocence even matter any more?
There is only the tiny problem that there was no invasion. And the context of the piece is to point out that information to convict Nazi war criminals was tainted (IOW not a good thing) with confessions obtained with torture, it is likely that if that had been known more Germans in Nuremberg would not had been executed.
This is the second time you have pretended that I have not objected to drone strikes in contradiction to my actual words.
I am going to have to consider whether your trolling, at this point.
[ /Moderating ]
Page 14 of 499 of the report. I don’t think all these questions in your second paragraph are answered, of course.
The campaign has a name. The Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign. WIKI: (Date bolding are mine):
On April 18, 1942, the United States launched the Doolittle Raid, an attack by B-25 Mitchell bombers from the USS Hornet on Tokyo, Nagoya, and Yokohama. The original plan was for the aircraft to bomb Japan and land at airfields in the unoccupied portion of China.
The operation started on May 15, 1942 with 40 infantry battalions and 15-16 artillery battalions of Japanese Army.
Sixty four American airmen parachuted into the area around Zhejiang. Most were given shelter by the Chinese civilians but eight of the Americans were picked up by Japanese patrols; three were shot after a show trial for ‘crimes against humanity’.
When Japanese troops moved out of the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in mid-August, they left behind a trail of devastation. Chinese estimates put the death toll at 250,000 civilians.[1]
Shunroku Hata, the commander of Japanese forces involved in the massacre of the 250,000 Chinese civilians, was sentenced in 1948 in part due to his “failure to prevent atrocities”. He was given a life sentence but was paroled in 1954.
I was off by 5 batallions. It was 56. And as you can see it was a deliberate campaign in response to the raid and it took place over a time span of 3 months following the raid. The death toll includes people who were given cholera, typhoid, plague and dysentery. It also killed 1,700 Japanese troops because of the diseases unleashed.
And I was correct, the number you quote was not really just in a quest or punishment for the Doolitle raid, the Japanese planned that operation ahead of that raid:
Interesting, in a morbid and perverse way, how much play the “Japanese” angle is getting. Over at Crooks and Liars, we have that paragon of truth and candor, Mr. Karl Rove, offering us:
Rove: CIA’s Waterboarding Not Torture Like Japanese War Crimes Because We Raised Detainee’s Legs
Dick Cheney: We Prosecuted Japanese For ‘Other Stuff, Not For Waterboarding’
Well, there you have it!
(Lest it be misunderstood, those two worthies are quoted in Crooks, they did not speak directly to that source. Links at the site, natch…)
This is rich. After wasting everyone’s time over whether the Chase Nielsen’s tormentors were executed “just” because of the waterboarding, it’s somehow obvious to him that the 250,000 deaths in a particular war zone were all about the Doolittle Raid.
The enhanced interrogation techniques have long since ceased. We knew about them years ago and they were ended. At most they are somewhat discomforting. No fingernails removed or other forms of real torture.
They represented a handful of people at a time when we didn’t know what was coming down the pipeline.
It was over before it started. While I confess I missed your objection to current drone strikes (and apologize) it rings hollow in the face of a limited and discontinued use of mildly discomforting interrogation techniques.
They slaughtered entire villages in retaliation for the raid. that you keep insisting it was “only” 25,000 when the actual number was 250,000 is just semantic bullshit. The total number of people killed stands in spite of your attempt at a debate point. Now if you have a quote that says the were originally tasked with killing 225,000 people then by all means post it.
As another poster mentioned in a past discussion on this:
:rolleyes: Some of our victims ended up insane, crippled or dead.
And it’s torture whether or not you choose to call it torture. Everyone involved belongs in a prison cell for life, or executed.
So, you’re in favor of the death penalty now? When did you change your mind about that?
post 815
Imperial Headquarter Order number 575
Unless you can point to that order declaring that it was organized to specifically punish the ones helping the raid the point stands, not all the Chinese who died were due to the search for the Doolittle fliers or to just punish them for giving them shelter.