Go watch the video of Chris Hitchens going through waterboarding. It’s torture.
It’s not even JUST about panic. You can’t breathe. You are literally drowning.
So we waterboard our own troops as training? How bad could it really be? Oh that right, it can kill you. So who have we killed with waterboarding?
We didn’t need to bomb Japan to end the war. We needed to bomb Japan to end the war on our terms rather than Russia’s terms.
Of course waterboarding can result in good incformation. I can probably torture you to the point where you will tell me where your mother is hiding. The will to survive is pretty strong.
You could waterboard me until I tell you my mother is Hitler, too.
I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not, but yes, some soldiers and intelligence personnel (I don’t know which) go through waterboarding because they’re being trained to resist torture. We know that some prisoners have died in U.S. custody; I can’t say if any soldiers or captives have died because of waterboarding. I don’t think the government would be forthcoming with that information, but maybe someone else has a better cite.
How would we know that George W. Bush’s administration considered it torture prior to them wanting to use it?
What Frostillicus quoted and responded to was a single supposition, and one declaratory statement.
You do the math.
ETA: When doing the math, please take note of the fact that the thread title promises a question, which the OP does not deliver.
I have a very dear friend, now 87 YO, that served in the navy during WWII. Much of it was on destroyers in the Pacific when the Japanese were really sending out the Kamikases. He was a loader on the 40mm and 20mm guns, and is now almost completely deaf as the result of these Kamikaze attacks.
He totally believes that dropping the atom bombs on Japan very likely allowed him to live to be 87, and not die at 20 as Japan fought to the death against the invaders.
I rather expect that there are a lot of veterans of the Pacific War who have that same opinion.
It’s said that history is written by the winners.
So is the dictionary.
Not “probabaly not,” but “actually so”: The U.S. in 1946, thus:
Nonsense. Japan barely surrendered even with the a-bombs. The Russian invasion did not threaten the Home Islands unless the Soviets were to land in Hokkaido.
Cliches, too.
Any self respecting human being should be able to discern reality from propaganda.
Don’t you think?
Well, it looks like your streak is intact.
Only the losers of wars and a rare few to keep up appearances after a scandal are prosecuted for war crimes. A war of aggression is a war crime, it’s what we hanged the Nazis for (not for killing jews or anything like that, though some years later that has happened with captured Nazis in hiding), It’s also exactly what the US does whenever the hell it pleases. Iraq and Afghanistan are just the latest.
Aerial bombardment wasn’t addressed by international law at the time of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Hague conventions took effect in 1907. Needless to say aerial bombardment wasn’t predicted at that time.
That being said there was a case brought against the Japanese government by survivors of the attacks. It seems as though they found the bombings illegal but the plaintiffs lost the suit.
Which pretty much explains why bombing cities wasn’t illegal.
You say “illegal” like international law is actual law, rather than … well, Iraq.
I was providing context to the other quote. I agree.
So what? Why would I believe you if you said that your mother was Hitler? I’d just cut off another finger and ask you once again, where your mother was hiding and you would tell me eventually. I think the ridiculous argument that people will admit to anything under torture so that somehow makes torture ineffective is stupid beyond belief. If I know you have information and I can verify that information then I WILL be able to get that information from you through torture, no ifs, ands or buts.
I have friends that were in MI that went through SERE training and you don’t drown people to death with waterboarding. Folks may have died in captivity but it wasn’t the waterboarding that killed them. Waterboarding simulates drowning but it doesn’t let enough water down your throat to actually drown you.
Yeah, no doubt but killing sailors on a battleship is not generally considered a war crime. Dropping an atomic bomb on them is (especially the second time around when you know how bad it will be.
WTF are you talking about???
“While publicly stating their intent to fight on to the bitter end, Japan’s leaders at the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War (the “Big Six”) were privately making entreaties to the neutral Soviet Union, to mediate peace on terms favorable to the Japanese.”
A lot of what was considered war crimes was determined after the fact. If the Axis had somehow pulled out a Win after the bombings of Japan, do you really believe that they wouldn’t have been considered war crimes?
That’s why they should’ve surrendered after the first one.