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Waterboarding Rocks!

Does it disturb anyone else that, in a rush to prove that we should be able to be evil bastards today, people are rushing to prove that we were evil bastards in other wars?

It's essentially saying, "We can go ahead and act like whatever we want, because we did it before, so it can't possibly be wrong".
 
Cicero said:
Any accounts of torture as used by OSS operatives are going to be apocryphal as it was not done in front of people marking it for posterity. But even to someone as woefully ignorant as you are about what their country did in the pursuit of victory over the Axis should begin to comprehend that things were done by the winning side that the losing side was prosecuted for at Nuremberg and Tokyo.
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So, what do you base your claims on? If there were no witnesses, no records, and no evidence, you cannot reasonably claim that it happened. (Of course, neither can you claim that it didn't happen, but the burden of proof is on the person making the positive claim.)

You can call me naive and ignorant all you like, but you made the claim and it is yours to support. Simply repeating yourself does not cut it.
 
Lonewulf said:
Does it disturb anyone else that, in a rush to prove that we should be able to be evil bastards today, people are rushing to prove that we were evil bastards in other wars?

It's essentially saying, "We can go ahead and act like whatever we want, because we did it before, so it can't possibly be wrong".
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Noooo. These historical reminders are supposed to give the "Americans don't violate the rules of war, that's what our enemies do" contingent that the post 9/11 world is not much different from past situations where extreme behavior was exhibited by a few people on the front lines. Only in the three waterbaording cases, this was an approved technique as legitimized by all levels of government before hand.
 
Cicero said:
Noooo. These historical reminders are supposed to give the "Americans don't violate the rules of war, that's what our enemies do" contingent that the post 9/11 world is not much different from past situations where extreme behavior was exhibited by a few people on the front lines.
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Mmmm....straw man.

The argument is that the Americans didn't torture during WWII. In fact, the military policy was specifically against the use of torture in order to protect American POWs. So far, the only evidence you have is that a Chinese man who was associated with Americans.

None of which supports your original claim.

eta: Seriously, did you read this at all? Calling Dai Li an OSS operative is just the pinnacle of spin.
 
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Upchurch said:
eta: Seriously, did you read this at all? Calling Dai Li an OSS operative is just the pinnacle of spin.
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I already tried pointing that out to him when he posted conveniently-edited excerpts of that review in a failed attempt to support his bizarre contention that Dai Li was an "OSS operative".

If he read that whole review (which I doubt), he missed stuff like "The OSS was admitted to China “as subordinate partners of General Dai Li’s intelligence service.”" ...despite the fact that this sentence was in the paragraph right before the one he copied and pasted into this thread!

In other words, Dai Li wasn't an OSS operative...the OSS men were Dai Li's operatives!
 
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Upchurch said:
Mmmm....straw man.

The argument is that the Americans didn't torture during WWII. In fact, the military policy was specifically against the use of torture in order to protect American POWs. So far, the only evidence you have is that a Chinese man who was associated with Americans.

None of which supports your original claim.

eta: Seriously, did you read this at all? Calling Dai Li an OSS operative is just the pinnacle of spin.
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Policy? Was it policy to shoot enemy POW's? Of course not. Did it happen. Of course. You seem to have mental block about occasions where Americans, and their surrogates, did not always follow the Geneva Convention. I say, so what? You say, but it wasn't policy.
 
Cicero said:
Really? So American OSS personnel took orders from a foreign authority who used torture on a de rigueur basis?
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According to that review (which you yourself originally posted, remember), yes. Dai Li, the head of Chiang Kai-Shek's secret police, was the head of SACO (Miles, the American, was simply a deputy). Dai Li told the OSS' overall head, Bill Donovan, that he would execute any OSS man found operating outside of SACO's authority (and remember, Dai Li, the foreign authority who indeed used torture on a regular basis, was in charge of SACO).

When Donovan complained about that to Dai Li's boss Chiang Kai-Shek (which again pokes a huge hole in your argument - if Dai Li was an "OSS operative", then why did the head of the OSS need to go to Chiang about this), Chiang spoke about "Chinese sovereignty", and told the OSS head to "act accordingly" - that is, submit to Dai Li's orders.
 
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Cicero said:
Policy? Was it policy to shoot enemy POW's? Of course not. Did it happen. Of course. You seem to have mental block about occasions where Americans, and their surrogates, did not always follow the Geneva Convention. I say, so what? You say, but it wasn't policy.
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Do you withdraw your claim, then, that the Americans tortured Germans, specifically the Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffeln, during WWII?
 
Upchurch said:
I saw that, too. I just didn't want to give Cicero any more excuse to avoid supporting his claim.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that it won't even slow him down when it comes to finding excuses to avoid supporting his claim.
 
ANTPogo said:
I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that it won't even slow him down when it comes to finding excuses to avoid supporting his claim.
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Elements of the Maquis were OSS operatives, yet they still answered to, and were loyal to, De Gaulle, not Wild Bill. Virginia Hall was an OSS agent who parachuted into France and recruited members of the French Resistance for small operations.
 
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Cicero said:
Elements of the Marquis were OSS operatives,
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Maquis, not "Marquis".

yet they still answered to, and were loyal to, De Gaulle, not Wild Bill.
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Evidence for your claim that these "elements" of the Maquis who answered to De Gaulle and NOT the head of the OSS itself were still considered part of the OSS?

Virginia Hall was an OSS agent who parachuted into France and recruited members of the French Resistance for small operations.
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Evidence that Hall tortured prisoners, or that her band of recruits tortured prisoners at her orders? A brief search turned up only the revelation that Hall was captured by the Nazis...who then tortured her. Despite their use of such super-effective and reliable intelligence gathering techniques, the Nazis could glean no information from her, and so she was sent to the women's concentration camp of Ravensbruck, where she was executed.
 
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Cicero said:
Virginia Hall was an OSS agent who parachuted into France and recruited members of the French Resistance for small operations.
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All of which has squat to do with our torturing anyone Her fate actually argues against the efficacy of tortutre.
 
leftysergeant said:
All of which has squat to do with our torturing anyone Her fate actually argues against the efficacy of tortutre.
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We know that G.I's shot enemy POW's. We also know that the OSS, their operatives, and independent Guerilla forces did not always operate by the Geneva Convention.
 
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