World War II U.S. interrogators didn’t use torture

Anyone except a Neo”conservative” ideologue would consider World War II to be more serious than Bush’s badly run “war” on terrorism, or his war in Iraq. Hitler was rather a lot nastier than Saddam, or even Osama bin Laden.

Yet new reports on U.S. interrogators in World War II, hitherto kept secret, show that, although they sometimes bent the rules, the interrogators didn’t torture Nazi prisoners. The Yanks were civilized men, unlike Bush and the Neocons:

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler‘s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration’s methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army’s Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

“I feel like the military is using us to say, ‘We did spooky stuff then, so it’s okay to do it now,’ ” said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.

When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece.

“I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war,” said Weiss, chairman of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy and a human rights and trademark lawyer in New York City.

That’s how it’s supposed to be done. Even in the midst of the worst war in world history, which killed more than 60 million people, and even while interrogating some Nazis who were complicit in the Holocaust, these interrogators maintained their humanity.

And that’s how Americans distinguished themselves from the Nazis and from our “ally,” Stalin’s Soviet Union.

America’s “sacred honor,” as our Declaration of Independence calls it, has been besmirched by the foul Bush regime and its Neocon ideologues. Nothing is more important than restoring that honor. The only way to do so is to elect as president Ron Paul.

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