Another Monday: Waterboarding, Pakistan, Manchester

Notes to get a week started:

-WAPO has an article by a former JAG who used to lecture soldiers on the niceties of the law and their responsibilities when guarding prisoners. The drift: waterboarding has been illegal, and recognized as so, for a long time. He offers several examples from the past, including one of a Texas sheriff as recently as 1983 getting ten years in prison for forcing confessions and using simulated drowning in the process. The Japanese also used a waterboarding during WWII and were tried for such in the trials after the conclusion of the war.

Diane recalls (in a comment on a previous blog) a Hollywood rendition of waterboarding: the ways the Salem witches were encouraged to confess to their devilish ways was to tie them up, suspend them from a long pole and dip them head first into a body of water over and over till they admitted their wrong doings.

(I just remembered my own experience with near drowning: at my great aunt Clara's cottage on Klinger Lake near Niles, Michigan: another young boy and I (might have been 11 or 12) had apparently had some disagreement while playing in the lake; he got me in a head lock and just kept pushing me underwater and holding me there, letting me up for air, then pushing me under again, over and over. I survived (!) but clearly remember it as a dastardly thing to do; scary as well.)

-also from WAPO, the mess in Pakistan gets messier with civil rights abandoned, opposition leaders being jailed, reporters being sent away, and Condi Rice reviewing the $150 million a month in aid that goes to Musharraf and his thugs. (I can think of better ways to spend that money, can't you?)

-Manchester and Goodbye, Darkness: Just in the early stages of the battle for Iwo Jima, a small bit of rock and lava that was critical in the plans to defeat Japan. (It was strategically placed in the Allies' air lane to the Japanese homeland and afforded the Japanese a two hour warning of impending bombardment when spotters on Iwo Jima radioed when hearing/seeing planes overhead.) Japanese have dug in and have no illusions of coming out alive and want the invaders to pay dearly. We do.

This is the first time that I have read to any extent about the war in the Pacific. Did a lot of reading of the European theater of operations as a college student and then down through the years. Kind of funny that being the case especially with my service years being spent not only in the navy but also in the Far East. Guess I was involved in other pursuits at the time...

Enough of all that bad stuff happening to others. Heading to the golf course. Guess what - another good golf day.