The Military-Non-Military Split Over Torture (Mark Shields)

[struggle4progress]

... Let us resolve first any doubt over whether the United States does officially prohibit cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Yes, that explicit prohibition is included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the binding Convention Against Torture, which was ratified by the U.S. Senate after the urging of the president of the United States to "demonstrate unequivocally our desire to bring an end to the abhorrent practice of torture." Those were the words of President Ronald Reagan.

Yes, the United States has long recognized the illegality of waterboarding prisoners. After World War II in the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, the United States convicted several Japanese soldiers as criminals for waterboarding American prisoners of war. In 1968, an American soldier involved in the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese prisoner was court-martialed.

What is most revealing about the continuing public debate over whether extra-legal or clearly illegal techniques of "enhanced interrogation" must be resorted to in order to stop terrorist attacks on America or Americans is the broad fault line between those Americans who are military combat veterans and those who, when they had the chance, preferred not to serve in the U.S. military ...

Among the American military leaders who opposed the Bush-Cheney administration's authorization of torture were Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Hoar, former commander in chief U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and three men -- former Air Force pilot and U.S. ambassador to Vietnam Pete Peterson, and former Navy pilots Cmdr. Frederick Baldock and Cmdr. Philip Butler. These three men, among them, spent 21 tortured years and 78 days as POWs in North Vietnam ... http://www.theusdaily.com/articles/viewopiarticle.jsp?id=2079&type=Opinion