Folks, see the mental contortions that someone who believes in moral equivalence will go to defend that view?
Yes, how
dare I think that the Soviet Union with their vast armies and nuclear stockpiles and oft-expressed notion that their domination of the globe was an inevitability was a bigger threat than whatever "terrorist" boogeyman
du jour that has you so terrified you're willing to construct insanely improbably hypotheticals so you can flail about uselessly in an attempt to rhetorically bludgeon anyone who feels differently than you do.
ROTFLOL! You are wrong. Everyone back then knew that if the Soviets invaded Europe, our conventional forces were not going to stop them ... that tactical (and sometimes those are pretty big) nuclear weapons would be used.
And that doctrine of "flexible response" was controversial, to say the least. The first use of nuclear weapons by the United States to stop a conventional assault into Europe was not a strategy that the European NATO allies liked very much (especially West Germany, whose territory would be the first one nuked). The US government never explicitly declared a "no first use" policy, but as a result of pressure from their allies they did remove the first strike options from their strategic nuclear plans. Reagan especially boosted the conventional land forces of the US that were deployed in Europe.
And are you aware that Soviet doctrine at the time did not distinguish between tactical and strategic use of nuclear weapons? That when we used tactical nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet advance, they would respond with strategic weapons. And it is fear of our response to THAT progression, i.e., MAD, that kept the Soviets from even attempting such an invasion, even as the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Soviets had a number of plans which relied on US political unwillingness to use nuclear weapons in NATO territory before the "other side" used them. It was, in fact, one of the reasons behind their doctrine that there was no difference between tactical and strategic use of nuclear weapons (coupled with their own explicit no-first-use pledge). They were threatening to vaporize the mainland US if their advancing armies in Germany were nuked, and therefore banking that the US government would accept conventional defeat in Europe rather than being burned to ashes.
Also, are you aware of the concept of a trip wire? That's what the forces in Europe mostly were. They were there to buy time, in hopes of negotiating a ceasefire before all hell broke loose. They also provided the justification for forcing our involvement ... giving the Soviets a reason to believe we'd use those tactical weapons to defend our troops.
The same principle applies in Korea. Our conventional forces probably could not stop a Korean attack. Our forces there are a trip wire to show that we are serious about stopping any aggression, ... to give a reason for responding with the full might of our arsenal should the North Koreans be so foolish as to invade South Korea.
Yeah, and? None of this changes the plain fact that the US Army planned to use completely non-torture methods of interrogation, even in the face of Korean and Soviet armies and the threat of nuclear annihilation.
You still haven't explained why a potential modern terrorist attack is more of a threat (and thus requires more vicious interrogations) than a choice between either Soviet military domination and nuclear armageddon.
I see that you didn't even try to understand what I said.
No, I understand entirely too well.
You're trying to find a way to diminish the threat the US Army knew they'd face on the battlefield and on the homefront during any Cold War-turned-Hot, and trying to artificially boost the threat posed by al-Qaeda to try and compensate, so you can claim that this new post-9/11 era requires tactics that weren't needed back then.
Which would be funny if it didn't want to make me weep every time I read it.
