Michael Tomasky: Obama was wrong; Britain tortured »
Posted By stephen-johnson 8 months ago in Political NewsThe other day I was sitting in the Washington office and my Guardian colleague Chris McGreal came up to me to talk about the subject of torture and the debate over its effectiveness. Chris pointed out to me that in Kensington during the second war, there was a facility known as The Cage inside which Nazi prisoners -- chiefly U-boat captains, but others -- were routinely tortured.
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stephen-johnson8 months ago
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FTA:
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"Then our colleague Richard Adams piped up to say that the Guardian had done a big piece on it a few years back. Indeed it had. Ian Cobain wrote it in 2005. And here it is. You really must read it, it's terrific stuff.
It was on one of the poshest streets in all of London, then and now; it was run by MI19, and specifically by a fellow called Alexander Scotland; it was of course a closely guarded secret; and -- most shockingly -- it operated until two or three years after the war ended, still mistreating captive Germans."
I'm pretty sure that the methods the Brits used against the Nazis weren't nearly as benign as those we used against Al Qaeda. And the Brits didn't agonize over it, either, as the memos show that we did. -
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pc258 months ago
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http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/04/barack-o...
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Barack Obama at 100 Day Presser: "Waterboarding Is Torture"
ABC Reporter Jake Tapper asked President Obama tonight if the previous administration used torture:
Obama did not answer the question directly about the Bush Administration.
He used Great Britain in World War II as an example of a country that did not torture.
Maybe he forgot about these German prisoners at Bad Nenndorf, near Hanover:
For almost 60 years, the evidence of Britain's clandestine torture programme in postwar Germany has lain hidden in the government's files. Harrowing photographs of young men who had survived being systematically starved, as well as beaten, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme cold, were considered too shocking to be seen.
Obama then declared that, "Waterboarding is torture."
The Bush Administration used the technique on 3 top level Al-Qaeda terrorists.
However, Obama did not say whether he will demand that our military stop using this "torture" technique during SERE training.
More... Bill O'Reilly corrected the president on British interrogation: "The British use very intense interrogation techniques on terrorists."-
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Tangent0018 months ago
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"However, Obama did not say whether he will demand that our military stop using this "torture" technique during SERE training."
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Pardon me? The SERE program is to train soldiers to RESIST waterboarding, not how to PERFORM waterboarding.
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ettucatk8 months ago
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Unfortunately, our history books have been changing for the past 30/35 years, to suit the bias of the left leaning 3 companies producing them. Our teaching methods have also changed, which accounts for our children being rated as 19th (that was the last published rating I have seen, could be lower by now) overall, worldwide. Our teachers are barely more knowledgeable than the children they teach, and they certainly no longer have the dedication needed to do a good job. Most teachers seem interested only in their pay, pensions, and days off. They pass children through even though they are not absorbing and retaining what needs to be learned. Teachers teach short cuts, instead of the fundamentals that provide a strong foundation for future growth. I have reviewed papers my granddaughter brings home that have already been graded, and I cannot remember how many times I have found outright errors that the teacher marked as correct, and outrageously poor spelling, grammer, and punctuation. When you cannot read, write, and properly speak your own language, you can bet you are going downhill fast.
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ettucatk8 months ago
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By now, everyone should be well aware that those in the Obama administration, including Obama, will say anything to further their own cause. Honesty and integrity and transparency have nothing to do with what they are about. Obama cares only about his "vision." He has a particular perception of what the world should be, and your safety be damned. If his agenda heightens the possibility of another attack on our soil, sobeit. Congress will huddle in their bunkers, and Obama will sit on his ideals on Air Force One. He will not be diverted from his agenda, simply to uphold his first priority, which is to protect Americans (and that includes protecting our borders from illegal immigration).
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