I Can’t Torture You… You Look Like Me
Not quite like the old days.
In this NPR story that was on All Things Considered today (good lord i’m turning into my dad!), elderly former interrogators talk about their now declassified work in a secret POW camp near Washington D.C.. The “P.O. Box 1142″ highly classified interrogation center held top German scientists and other prisoners of war- including scientists who had been working to enrich uranium for the enemy.
Were they ‘enemy combatants’? That’s a new term; but torture is ancient. Were they tortured? Nope! It seems they were a little too white for that. Or Christian. Or both…
Transcripts show that interrogations at Fort Hunt were usually straightforward, almost cordial affairs. Veterans say they often got their best information just by being friendly. Some prisoners were even wined and dined to soften them up.Dean, who later became a top U.S. diplomat, says it was very effective.
“I was a pretty good athlete. … I would do sports with them in order to make them more cooperative. I would take some of the people out for dinner at a restaurant in town in civilian clothes,” he recalls.
One of the interrogators from P.O. Box 1142 actually traveled to Europe to locate one particular prisoner’s wife. That prisoner ended up spending the rest of his life teaching and living in the US.
Contrast this with Guantanamo. Anyone else ever see that social experiment where actors ‘passed out’ on the street in different areas to see if passersby would stop and help? Those passed out people who happened to look like the potential good samaritans were the ones who got the help. Those who looked different, well, got to lay around a while.
Are you retarded? Seriously, what a stupid, ridiculous post. Everything has to be about ethnicity and religion to you.
What about “top German scientists” don’t you understand? This isn’t your average Abu Jihad with an AK47 and basic knowledge of how to construct an IED.
These people weren’t expendable, the way the average Islamist terrorist is. They also were from a nation which was utterly, completely defeated in the context of Total War. They were happy to apply their scientific knowledge to the burgeoning American military complex. Not a single one of them resisted.
In short, they weren’t interrogated, they were debriefed. The only purpose of their debriefing was to identify what they were working on, and how this could be integrated with existing American scientific projects. They were not withholding critical battlefield information on which lives depended on.
Let’s apply that to Abu Jihad:
Interrogator: Dear Abu Jihad, what are you working on, my dear?
Abu Jihad: Killing Jewish pigs and American infidels.
You see? It just don’t work.
You’re an idiot, Emily. I never expected such stupidity to be publicly displayed for all to see. You are an embarrassment to basic education.
No matter which combination of the usual suspects defends your retardation, no matter what combination of pills you’ll claim you forgot to take this morning, everyone reading understands quite clearly that you are a sheer buffoon.
Personal attacks aside, I tend to agree with the poster above. Not every situation is analogous, and in attempting to frame two situations as such, a framework must be laid out. Otherwise, we’re just left reading nonsense, epitomized by the last paragraph that seemingly references some hidden camera show on Fox.
That aside, I’m not quite sure how the title of this post relates to the actual content.
Peace.
Given that we firebombed entire German cities in WWII, whose residents were oh so white and oh so Christian, your argument is as ridiculous as the above two commentator suggest.
Maybe you are a buffoon.
Boys, all she is asking is for equal treatment of Arabs as we treated the Nazis in WWII.
“we firebombed entire German cities”
Which Arab cities should we firebomb, Emily?
Another lame and mis-informed post. I’d like to see Emily stand up and back up her words though.
adding a picture of naked brown people being hooded doesn’t help the fact that this post is a piece of crap and you are a buffoon
interesting how you added the picture after getting ripped apart in the comments
weak
Mitch sounds like a real douchebag.