Never Again

Bill C said:

The most common fallacy about torture is that we need to avoid it so
that it's not done top our troops. Well that's BS. It has been done to
our troops as a major, systematic, government approved policy in every
conflict since WW1, no matter what we did.

I wouldn't go that far. If you look at for example WW2, the western
front in Europe was quite civilized compared to what was happening in
the eastern front or wherever Japan was fighting. The allied prisoners
of war were treated relatively fairly by the Germans, while in the
eastern front there was absolutely no sign of fairness of chivalry from
either side. Of course it doesn't work like that everywhere, every
time, but sometimes it can.

-as

Antti Salonen said:

Bill C said:

The most common fallacy about torture is that we need to avoid it so
that it's not done top our troops. Well that's BS. It has been done to
our troops as a major, systematic, government approved policy in every
conflict since WW1, no matter what we did.

I wouldn't go that far. If you look at for example WW2, the western
front in Europe was quite civilized compared to what was happening in
the eastern front or wherever Japan was fighting. The allied prisoners
of war were treated relatively fairly by the Germans, while in the
eastern front there was absolutely no sign of fairness of chivalry from
either side. Of course it doesn't work like that everywhere, every
time, but sometimes it can.

-as

I agree that generally the Germans treated our prisoners ok with some
exceptions, but as you point out the treatment handed down from the
Japanese with the full knowledge and support of their leadership was
brutal and widespread. The eastern front was brutal, there's pretty
good documentation from people who escaped to the west of the Soviets
massacreing whole surrendering German units along with other nice
pieces of brutality.
Bill C

On 13 Feb 2006 16:28:09 -0800, "Bill C" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Well that's BS. It has been done to
our troops as a major, systematic, government approved policy in every
conflict since WW1, no matter what we did.

Come now, lets go back a bit further. The Union and Confederate sides
in the U.S. Civil War after the ending of parole easily matched most
of the nasty examples from anywhere and approached all but the worst
of the rest.

The world is fascinated by numbers. A person that died in Dresden from
flames is no different than those that died in Tokyo. For that matter,
they are no different from a tanker than got flamed in WWI, WWII or
the Sino-Viet war in 1979. It ain't over until the last flame thrower
is turned off.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...