There Is No Cat - America doesn't torture?

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

America doesn't torture?

Lots of chatter on the political blogs today about waterboarding, which our government has used on some of the prisoners taken in the War On Terror, triggered by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that says, among other things, that waterboarding doesn't rise to the level of torture.

Robin Rowland begs to differ.

Rowland, a journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is also the son of a prisoner of the Japanese army during World War II who was held on the River Kwai. He's also the author of a masters thesis about the Japanese use of torture there, and of a forthcoming book based on that thesis.

Rowland notes that when the Japanese used the very same techniques that the Wall Street Journal claims is just fine and dandy, they were convicted of war crimes. Many of those convicted were executed, including the officer who ordered the use of the tactic.

Somehow I doubt Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney will ever be tried, convicted and executed. But that's what precedent suggests would be an appropriate action.

Posted at 10:09 PM

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"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

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