Torture Is Un-American. How German POWs Became Our Friends

Torture is un American. It makes enemies, not friends.

I lived for some years in Europe including in small towns in then West Germany and Austria. I cannot tell you how many times I met men who greeted me as a friend just because I was American, and who explained that they liked Americans because Americans had treated them so well during their times time as prisoners of war in America. Some of them described to me how they had worked on American farms as POWs.

Torturing prisoners may get information in the short run, but it does not build the trust and respect on which long term relationships are built. Prisoners eventually return home. And they tell their friends and family how they were treated by their captors. America won friends in Europe person by person, city by city, through kindness, by example and because we were generous and kind to the peoples we had essentially conquered, especially the POWs. We not only did not torture, but we showed our respect for human life, fed our hungry enemies and helped them rebuild their wartorn countries. We were good winners.

George Bush and his coterie in Washington don't know how to be good winners. They do not know how to treat those they defeat with respect. They do not know how to be generous and kind. The money that goodhearted Americans are earmarking for the rebuilding of Iraq is going to the international conglomerates and their greedy owners, officers and directors. The policies of the Bush administration right down the line make enemies not friends. Torture is un American, totally un American. It will make enemies not friends. The Bush administration must be stopped and called to accounts.

There wasn't a lot of animosity between Germans and Americans during WWII. A lot of German soldiers were just serving their country and had no desire to kill Americans, likewise for our side since Germany didn't attack us at Pearl Harbor.

These terrorists are doing what they do because they already have a deep ideological hatred of us. I don't think our treatment of those who eventually go home (and that's the minority) will help much.

Japan treated our POW's 1000 times more harshly than anything we have ever done in this "War on Terra", and yet Japan is one of our closest economic and strategic allies today.

I am against torture of course, but I don't think we can change the minds of the people who end up in US custody by coddling them.

>>but I don't think we can change the minds of the people who end up in US custody by coddling them.<<

Treating people with decency and respect isn't "coddling". Many who end up in U.S. custody are innocent of any crime, many are just defending their countries from foreign invaders. I think you are wrong about this. I think many minds could be changed this way, and I'll bet many of them have already, both ways. I've read interviews with former detainees who said that many of their captors were kind to them, and how much they appreciated that. It's the Bush administration that set the policies for detainee mistreatment.

captors were kind to them."

I gotta agree with you there. The most "cruel and unusual" thing that we are doing to our detainees is our indefinite detention of them. They deserve a day and court and a definite sentence to serve instead of being held in purgatory. In reality, these guys are being treated far better by the US than if they were captured on identical charges in their home countries.

I'll be brave (flame suit on!) and say that If I had a choice to serving a 5 year definite sentence at Guantanamo or a California State Max Prison, I'd rather go to Guantanamo, (assuming I was muslim of course.) People are getting killed and maimed at CA prisons all the time; with the exception of the suicides, we don't know that is going on at Guantanamo.

People on DU like to be dramatic and claim that Guantanamo is some sort of concentration camp or Soviet era Gulag. It's just not reality.

Back to the original argument though, I don't think our fair treatment of prisoners is necessarily going to help. Maybe you are correct that it will prevent things from getting worse, but it won't make things get better. Too much animosity toward the US. I don't think it's fixable. Basically, we're screwed.

I would like to see some of this indignation turned towards our own prison system. You don't have to look beyond our domestic detainees to realize we are a nation that advocates torture. Right-wing shitheads have turned our nation into a bloodthirsty, warmongering state that begs for cruelty within and without.

Plenty of foreign citizens (Mexico and Latin America) in our own despicable prison system getting it a lot worse (stabbed, beaten, maimed,raped, killed) than anyone in Guantanamo or even Abu Gharaib.

It's always curious to see how people choose to direct their rage toward certain injustices, while ignoring others.

having charges brought against you? How would you like to be taken thousands of miles away from your country and imprisoned without a trial for years? Because that's what's happened in Guantanamo. Is that the American Way?

The lack of a definite sentence or court hearing is definitely "cruel and unusual" punishment that we could not constitutionally do to our own worst prisoners. It's wrong, but the actual physical treatment that the military is giving them is better than your average State max prisoner in CA or NY.

If I had a set amount of time to do, and I was muslim, I would most definitely prefer Guantanamo to Sing Sing or Pelican Bay. The actual treatment they are receiving isn't bad at all, it's the policy of indefinite detainment that's the problem. Maybe you're not disagreeing with me, but many on
DU who claim that Guantanamo is a concentration camp or Soviet gulag would.

... are better treated than "your average State max prisoner."

Nobody has access to the Guantanamo prisoners: not news organizations, not lawyers, ...

State Max Security prisons, especially in states like CA and NY with large gang populations, are absolutely awful. It's not the guards (usually) torturing the prisoners, but the violence and sexual abuse they receive from fellow inmates under the supervision of guards amounts to torture.

There has been (admittedly limited) access to the prisoners. But the press, bi-partisan groups from congress, and lawyers have all been to Guantanamo in some way shape or form and we have yet to hear any allegations of the rape, maiming and murder that goes on at American Prisons. The military is simply more professional and better trained than the average American prison guard, not to mention the facilities are brand new and there is no overcrowding which causes many of the problems in the USA. On top of that, the entire world's media has its eye on Guantanamo waiting for the military to slip up so they can criticize,(deservedly so on the no court date or definite sentencing issue) and so far, they haven't had that chance.

My main point here is that it is the policy that deserves the condemnation, not the actual physical treatment of the prisoners, which is by all accounts, better than what we offer our own criminals.

Their visits have been carefully controlled and limited, and there is no way to assure they have not received "Potemkin Village" tours. You claim that "the entire world's media has its eye on Guantanamo" is meaningless, since world media has no access to Guantanamo: there is no transparency whatsoever in the situation.

The only organization that has had any access to prisoners is the ICRC, and as a matter of policy it keeps its reports private. Since the Administration declines to releaase the ICRC reports, the only info available is whatever leaks from the reports.



I do not dispute that state and federal prison conditions can be unpleasant and dangerous, but there's just no evidence to support your claim that Guantanamo is better. If you want to continue to claim I'm wrong, then I think it's time for you to provide some supporting evidence rather than baldfaced assertions.

Then where do the allegations of Koran abuse and mistreatment come from?

You are absolutely correct that the access is limited, and the limited access is wrong, but we haven't heard any substantial and credible claims of abuse thus far. Why should we just assume that torture and mistreatment are going on there if we don't know for sure?

Senator Durbin quoted from it and caught a lot of crap because of reference to Nazis and Soviet gulags. But it was a documented report of abusive treatment and conditions.

Do you know where I could take a look at it or is it classified?

CCR Submits Their Detailed Account of Abuse to Senate Armed Services Committee
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=4bUT8M23lk&Content=424

I couldn't find the report itself. Perhaps it is classified, or maybe I didn't look hard enough. But here's a portion of it that Durbin read into the Congressional record:

you would see that allegations of abuses come from leaked ICRC material and the testimony of released prisoners ...

The last item is especially telling: to learn where a man is from and who his family is, the simplest thing is to ask him. They're scouring paperwork for such info only because they have no access.

<edit:typo>

But it may make a world of difference with their families and neighbors back home. People who entertain more or less borderline about Americans. Or who may not like us now, but would normally lose their hatred, or at least the passion of it, over time.

Nor is fanaticism a black or white condition, even among Islamic fundamentalists. For every radical who hates us enough to blow himself up, there are probably hundreds of people involved in their operations, sometimes in support roles, sometimes helping to hide them, or just agreeing not to inform. They are sympathetic in general, but no irretreivably so. You don't want to harden those attitudes.

I would also point out that even among those who hate us as passionately as you describe and who can never and will never be convinced otherwise, torture is still a very bad idea because if they ever have a choice of being captured or fighting to the death, they are much more likely to choose death if they think they will be tortured. Even if they want to die as martyrs, it's only human nature to want to die a little bit later. It makes our soldiers' jobs very much more difficult and dangerous to go up against people who will fight to the death out of terror of what will happen to them if they are captured.

There wasn't a lot of animosity between Germans and Americans during WWII. A lot of German soldiers were just serving their country and had no desire to kill Americans, likewise for our side since Germany didn't attack us at Pearl Harbor.



Well they did a hell of a good job for sweet guys who loved us so much.

And so did we for that matter.

I don't think I can agree with your assessment of the soldiers on either side. Germany wanted to conquer the world. We wanted to stop them at all costs. Other than the nazi lovers like the Bush family and others, anti-german feelings were pretty high.

Only about 1 in 10 GI's had a real desire to kill a German soldier. They looked like us, many Americans were of Germanic descent, they never directly attacked us, they treated Americans well as POW's, etc. etc.

Something like 8 in 10 GI's wanted to kill a Japanese soldier. They directly attacked us and were unbelievably brutal to their American POW's. There was a real hatred, and the Pentagon's propaganda enabled this hatred to help the war effort.

I'm pretty young, but from what I've read and been told, that really was the general sentiment at the time. And you have to remember, Hitler never tried to demonize America in the way the Middle East propaganda machine has. Hitler saved all the brainwashing to demonize the jews, which enabled the Holocaust.

my dad was 16 yrs old when Pearl Harbor was bombed..his dad was in WWI in the navy and his Ship was the USS Arizona..the first ship sunk in Pearl Harbor..my dad was turning 17 on dec 29th of that year..my grandpa wanted to re-enlist because it was his ship sunk first..but the Navy would not take him because he lost his eye on the USS Arizona as a gunner..on the ship...


So my grandfather took my dad ..his oldest son down and enlisted him...he had to wait a couple weeks until he turned 17 ..but on my dads 17th birthday he went to naval training..and became a Seebee..

My dad was sent to the South Pacific..and was sent to many islands to build the landings for the marines and army..to the day my dad died ..he had nightmares..and he had a hate for the Japanese..he would allow nothing in our home that was made in Japan..nor would he even let someone park a foreign car in our driveway..and he was a bull about it..

My dad's last days on this earth...he relived in hallucinations the war..he had us ducking near his hospital bed from the "gooks" as he always called them..
he saw children that he had fear from..and it was horrible..no one should have to leave this earth with such memories or fear or flashbacks....and i saw fear on my dads face in his last days..i had never seen in my entire life with him to that point..

it tore me up as well as my brothers and sisters..to see this once incredibly strong man with such fear ...over a war that was long ended..

My father in law was in Pearl Harbor with his sister and other family members..they were immigrants..and they were building the oil tanks in Oahu for the US Navy..he was underground building the underground tanks when Pearl Harbor was hit.
He joined the Army as soon as he could get out of Oahu..

My father in law was in the Army and landed in Cherbourg France on the tip of the Cotentin Peninsula in the Normany region..where they defeated the Germans , and where Hitler was furious the germans had lost this port..which was to become the main port for the US Navy..if my memory is good on this..he told the story many times..to me..

I tried to get my father in law to go to Normandy for the 50th anniversary of D-DAY..i offered to take him..and stay with him..but he would not go..he said he could not go..he said his memories would not allow him to go..i took his brother instead...

but my father in law would talk so often of a young soldier that saved his feet..

my father in law had been living for several years in Hawaii..and he had grown up most his life in Calif after coming to the USA from Spain..as a young child..

so he was not accustomed to cold weather..and his first days in the trenches & fox holes of Cherbourg France his feet were getting frost bite..

..another young soldier he did not know, was next to him in a fox hole his 2 or 3rd night ( i can't remember which) and the young guy sat on my father in laws feet..he told my father in law to put his feet under his butt to keep his feet warm..

the next morning after falling asleep with his feet warm my father in law woke..and the young man he had his feet under was dead..my father in law never got over that..not even in his dying days..

and he never wanted to go back to Normandy..ever again..he said the nightmares haunted him...

so i know you are young..i just want you to understand..war never leaves one..no matter how old a person gets..it never leaves your memory..or your soul..

and it haunts many until their dying days..and sadly..many of our men and women in Iraq today..will never ever forget what they saw and experienced..

some will not have seen as bad of stuff as others ..but those who had to take another human life or saw a friends life taken..they will never ever get over it..even if they speak of it with full macho...they will not escape it in their minds...they can not..

and i know you are young..but please get your education..and do not give up your life for this mistaken war..this illegal war...

fly

Those are incredible stories. I find anecdotes like that inspirational and disheartening at the same time. I have an incredible amount of respect for people like your father and father in law, especially compared to other less grateful members of my age group.

Sorry if I came off as uneducated. I was trying to generalize a situation with a wide brush as best I could.

uneducated....you said you were young..and the mom in me does not want to see one young person give up their life for this war or any other misgotten war..

stay in school if you are that age..get your education..and it is the youth of this country that can stop further wars...you must stay engaged..and convince others your age to get engaged..and stop this bloody senseless war..before we have another black wall with thousdands of young people's lives names on it..for no damn reason but the greed of our so called leaders...

get involved and stay involved in educating your friends and gettign them involved to stop this madness!! we need the youth of this country to wake up to the horrors of this and any and every war!!

keep up reading and doing research and knowing the truth..and getting the truth to your friends...

and go do something..like knocking on doors..or making phone calls for the dems..or running web sites for young people..there is so much you can do ..and we need you to help us old folk get it done!!

thank you for participating in our country..but we need more of you!!

sending hugs..fly

Uh... no offense, but that doesn't sound too likely.

i don't think it was..and my dad and i had words about it..many times..but i was not in the war..he was..and that is what he called the japanese..and others in the South Pacific..
My dad was a tough tough ..huge man..

my dad ran bulldozers and built air strips on the following islands..he was on Guam,Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Philippines,Iwo Jima, Tulagi Island,Los Negros Island,and the Mariana Islands..

he landed with the marines most times....and he was always in advanced Naval Construction Battalion

fly

They have little knowledge of the world. Sending them to Guantanamo does not broaden their view of about life beyond the prejudices they learned and the lies they heard being raised in strict Muslim cultures. Think about the American kid born in the boondocks in Alabama, home schooled by religious fanatics and sent to Bible college. And then think no TV, few movies and a culture a hundred times more conservative and angry. What do you think comes out? Environment does not explain or justify fanaticism, but it contributes to it in a big way.

The Muslim religion is not very tolerant. But it is not the only religion that is not very tolerant. Torture does not make the tortured more tolerant or less angry.

that is true, but those U-Boats were not exactly shooting love messages at our ships. In any event, the bottom line is this: Torture is wrong for many reasons. It may lead to false intelligence, it strips us of the higher moral ground, and it gives the green light for our troops to be treated similarly, by people who may otherwise think twice about it, and these are just a few of the many reasons for not doing it. It is disgusting that any American can even try to justify this shit.

U-boat torpedo a fuel ship sitting just outside the harbor on the Florida Coast during WWII.

Not much animosity? They watched that ship blow up and burn and knew that no one could survive that. This was considerably less than a mile offshore in US waters.

There was plenty of animosity to go around. And after the war, when Hitler's "final solution" was brought to light, there was also disgust, contempt, and detestation for the Germans.

June 13, 2006

.. the United States should have long since used either criminal trials or military tribunals with full due process rights to determine which detainees should be held and which freed.

The 460 detainees (there were about 600 at one point) have been at Guantanamo for a period almost as long as US involvement in World War II, but just 10 have been charged with any offenses. None of the three who committed suicide had been charged. One, though he apparently didn't know it, was on schedule to be released to his homeland if an appropriate form of detention could be arranged there ..

In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush administration had no right to hold persons without charge at Guantanamo and without a right to challenge their detention in court, after which Congress passed a law stripping the inmates of even that right ..

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/06/13/deaths_at_guantanamo/

This is the best argument against torture I may have ever heard, and I've been hearing a lot of it lately. Kudos to you!

Here's a master list of email addys for the TV heads
http://www.hereinreality.com/heads.html

and here's the best list of US newspapers on the internet (I think)

http://www.usnpl.com

~*Peace*~

Had a German pow camp.I've seen the photos, the camp newspapers and read local's accounts of the interaction between the prisoners and the locals. Many of them were farm boys and were sent to work on local farms. Little security, there was no where for them to go. Most were glad to be out of the war and to be well fed and well treated. The real meaning of hearts and minds.

Granted, he was the pilot of a B-52, an officer.. and I know officers were sent to different camps than regular enlisted. He has told me many times of how he was treated. They were not coddled, but were comfortable. The biggest complaint wasn't hunger or mistreatment so much as boredom. He refuses to watch shows like Hogan's Heroes because he feels it makes a mockery of the experience. The Germans weren't stupid, he says. They weren't idiots. They had a job to do and they did it. They didn't beat anyone, they allowed the Red Cross to come in and inspect the camps on a regular basis. He said that the Red Cross was a godsend, as they usually brought books and playing cards and board games for the prisoners. They also interviewed prisoners to make sure that they weren't being tortured or otherwise molested.

Only one prisoner died while my friend was there in that camp (over a year and a half), and that was a man who was in the privy, didn't hear an air raid siren and when he walked out in the open he was killed by a guard. The prisoners had their own library and doctors office set up. He said at times that the rations were low and the Germans would bake sawdust into the loaves of bread to make the flour last longer. In general, the guards ate the same as the prisoners. When the war was over and word hit camp, the Germans told the prisoners that they were leaving, and some were friendly with the prisoners and hugs were passed around. A few days afterwards, the Russians came and liberated the camp. They brought wagonloadss of vegetables and some cattle for food that they had gotten from farms as they traveled. He laughs alot when he describes the Russians. He said they were so tanked up on vodka that many were sleeping on the wagons, and when they got into camp, many passed out where they fell. They offered vodka to the prisoners and were generally a merry bunch.

Sure doesn't sound like Club Gitmo does it?

my dad also was a POW in Germany. after the germans bailed out on the camp and fled, when the US liberated the camp, rounded up Germans were told they would be turned over to the Russians if they did not cooperate. The Germans and the Russians murdered millions of each other and frequently did not take prisoners (most POW's were simply killed, some were put in camps). German soldiers had a huge fear of falling into Russian capture.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

yet many facts about WWII are not known to most Americans. Only the summary is taught. Sigh...

brought in all those nazi scientists so they could continue their evil research here). Heck, maybe they've taken over and we've become the fourth reich!

Washington Post a few years ago. Article includes info as to how we trained German POW officers to build a democracy after the war.

Just google - Washington Post Kansas pows.

I would list the link but I don't know how.

Compared to the article I am currently reading in Vanity Fair (Sept.2006 with Kate Moss on the cover)entitled Baghdad Is Burning and an on-line article I read yesterday about the manner and who was hired to re-build Iraq (idiot children of Repugs that had just gotten out of college) I have not had a good reading weekend.

How did we officially become so damn stupid?

(with a barf bag handy)---they paint jr as really smart and claim both booshes are really caring and forthright. Yeesh!

I was interested to see (in the baghdad burning piece) that someone is making tons of $$$ off Iraq's oil (sporadic tho it may be). Occurred to me that maybe THAT's why gas prices have skyrocketed---we prolly promised to make someone rich off of iraq oil, and since it only can be produced about 1/3 of the time, we've conveniently tripled the prices. Just a pet theory.

The third thing in that issue that I found fascinating is in the article about that poor sad dad with the pic of his dead son in the WTC on 911. They said early in the article that taking pics of ground zero was illegal early on because it was a crime scene (how does that even make sense? i dunno why you can't take pics of a crime scene, unless it would interfere with a coverup). I was fascinated since as we all know, all the evidence in that alleged crime scene was cleaned up and swept away starting at day 1. (Had just finished watching Alex Jones' very interesting "Terror Storm" for free on google video, and listening to a fascinating brit on the radio who talked about his spooky but comelling 911 theories----and also the three part "911 Mysteries--Demolitions" which I highly recommend to the openminded).

Anyway, happy reading!

I was first astonished when they started to take prisoners and put bags on their hands. It looked like they were animals.

But the most frightening thing came when I heard Karpinski that this whole torture thing comes directly from the top.
http://drop.schlafe.com/241005karpinski.mp3

Let's not forget John Yoo's torture Memo.

And now the Uzbek President gets an UNESCO Award
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/09/14/uzbekunesco.shtml



They are all crazy and try everything to create new terrorist in this bogus "war on terror"

in the south of France..EZE ..and an old man came running up to us and kissed us both on the cheek and said he loved Americans ..because we helped save his nation...he was so sweet and so sincere,.he wanted to show us a graveyard ..and tell us who in his family were lost during the war..but they finally got saved by the Americans..

i was a flight crew for a large airline so i traveled outside our country before retirement for my job..

but France is my love...

so i go very often..

I took a friend and we were sitting on the stairs of Sacre Coeur..listening to kids playing music ..and a french man was running down the stairs and he heard us singing in english..and he turned around abruptly ..and said ..AMERICAN? we said yes and he kissed us both..telling us he loved us for what we did for his country..we said we did nothing but our dads did...

and he kissed us again..

when i took my son many times to Normandy..while he was growing up..we were invited into people's homes for tea..and hugged and kissed by everyone we met..and they profusely Thanked us as Americans..

...2 years years ago i was at the war museaum in Normandy with a friend....and a bus with germans came to see the museaum..well they were ignored and treated very very coldly....by all the French workers at the museaum..but we were treated like royality..and kissed and hugged by everyone in the Museaum..

and everywhere we went by the cemetary and the beaches..

the same reaction is what i always recieve when i go to the cemetery of Belleau Wood France..

all i have ever experienced abroad is respect and kindness..by most who were in the war..and lived through it..

I am sorry to say..last spring when i went to Paris was the first time in 30 years i experiemced a withdrawl from the French people..
not a rudeness or anger or anything..but a withdrawl..

I have many friends there from over all the years i have been to Paris and France...

but this is honestly the first time i felt..a strangeness ...like we are not to be trusted any longer..

it made me sad..very very sad...

fly

a. Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

(T)he intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a. Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

b. Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c. Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d. Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e. Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear;

f. Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g. Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h. Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i. Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j. Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k. A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l. Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894033/

Win or lose, these people are disasters. Ever where they go, everything they touch becomes a disaster and even if it was a disaster, it gets worse.

Torture is the most Un-American there could be...and that's what they want. What does that say?