From Andrew Sullivans Blog (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/09/what_weve_lost.html)

A Desert Storm veteran observed exactly the same as Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff did: That enemy soldiers are much more likely to surrender to someone who's treating his prisoners humane. And that this is a reputation the US army no longer posesses.

Quote:
"Looking back, I think that one of the main drivers in these men's heads was that they knew, absolutely, that they'd get fair treatment from us, the Americans. We were the good guys. The Iraqis on the line knew they had an out, they had hope, so they could just walk away. (A few did piss themselves when someone told them we were Marines. Go figure.) Still, they knew Americans would be fair, and we were."

Good guys? Still?

Un-Hollywood your thinking some of you. I was a Canadian soldier stationed in The Ruhr Valley a few years after WW II. For ten months I lived in a German household. It was in a small farm village with fewer than 500 total pop. Every single farmer in that village had once been a Wehrmacht soldier. All had served on the Russian Front for at least a few months. Some for over 3 years. And every German (war hating) farmer soldier was also a very reluctant draftee into the Wehrmacht. Which is similiar to the REGULAR citizen soldiers of any country. None were rageing Nazi's. That is until-- 'The New History' out of Hollywood claimed they were all ogres. In fact of the 80 million Germans only 2 million were Nazi party members. In the village I lived in; nobody had any more political thoughts than some 20 year old farmboy from Kansas has who is presently serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some US soldiers in Iraq might be screaming Republicans, but I'll bet most of those guys don't give a damn about politics. They are only fighting for the United States, not for Pres Bush the same as those farmers from The Ruhr were fighting for Germany not Hitler. Everybody just wanted to survive and get back home in one piece. The ordinary German soldier was drafted and was for most part non-political. He went to war because like all the men from all the nations, he had too--or get shot for refusing. They shot us too (remember) if we didn't kill them. So please folks; Un-Hollywood. Try to understand that Hans, Fritz and Willie were not one bit different than Johnny, Billy and Buddy were in the Canadian Army. Hungry, wet, homesick and crawling with lice from the stinking urine filled foxholes.--If you are thinking all German soldiers were willing fanatical killing Nazis well that was (perhaps) some elite SS Units, not the Wehrmacht, or the Luftwaffe or the Unter Marine U-Boat crews. And even amongst those all Nazi SS Units, the Nazis had to look long and hard to find Nazi SS soldiers with the stomach to kill little Gypsy, Yugoslav, Ukranian, Russian, or Jewish women and children.--For the Jews were not the only ones in those Concentration Camps--In fact they were a minority (overall). I didn't learn that from Hollywood though, I learned it because I WAS THERE MYSELF, as a victorious soldier serving in a defeated country. That was before history was changed a mite out in LA. Now may God please, that we find peace some day on this beautiful BLUE PLANET. And perhaps that same someday all our children, in all our nations, can play without fear of bombs, bullets or fire-storms.

Unlike many of the people that have posted here, I have served this nation in 2 wars, as a soldier we were taught to believe in the Geneva Conventions, wether the enemy did or not, we abided by the rules.

I find it absurd that we are now led by men that have never served in a war, that want to rewrite these rules, when if you look in their past they have violated the Nuremberg Codes of 1947 by approving the use of American Soldiers in Chemical weapons an drug tests that were later determined to be in violation of international law.

You don't need any europeans telling you how to decide how to handle terrorists, after all they lived with terror in the 70's and 80's and we turned our back on them, it wasn't our problem, now it is.

The Army and the nation I served was the standard stetter's, we did not go to the lowest common denominator, we strived to be the best, and frankly I resent these chickenhawks, wanting to approve torture, renditions, approve criminal acts after the facts, illegal wiretaps on American citizens, if you believe there are 500 or 1000 terrorists calling America everyday, you need a check up from the neck up, we are being lied to, every day by this administration.

Yes this nation abused soldiers from 1955 thru 1975 at a place called Edgewood Arsenal, 7120 of them, 40% are now dead and of the 4022 survivors 54% are disabled and the VA and DOD refuse to find them, why? ask them they won't tell me.

It is not terrorists the president wants to torture, but suspected terrorists. His proposed legislation therefore will allow him to gather up people, some of them innocent, and treat them in ways that I had always thought America would eschew.
But even more incredible than that is that I actually voted for this person.

Ontario writes:

"[I]t is your [i.e., Red Stater's] ignorance that misses the operative conventions on torture are under the Convention on Torture and International Human Rights law. Not Geneva."

I'll have to take your word on that. Assuming the U.S. has signed a treaty to uphold that convention, though, my underlying point still stands. That point: Signing a treaty, then unilaterally determining what counts as compliance with it, simply turns treaties of this sort into a meaningless sham. Maybe they are, or at least think they are. A little public honesty, however, would be helpful: Either the U.S. should take its treaties seriously, or it shouldn't sign them at all.

"The operative treaties have tried to legally define torture as "cruel or degrading treatment" and "psychological torture" - leaving it up to the shysters of the Leftist NGOs and UN to define what psychological suffering, cruel and degrading means. THEY are the ones who claim panties on the head and any other means of coercive interrogation - cold, sleep depravation, playing Red Hot Chili Peppers, stress positions, bullying....all constitute "the crime of torture"."

One could take this statement in two different ways. On one reading, you're simply lamenting the fact that the "leftist NGO's and the UN," as opposed to groups with whom you are ideologically more comfortable, have set the terms of the debate concerning how torture is to be defined. The solution to that, I guess, is to mount a serious effort to argue why the international-law types should accept a narrower definition of torture.

However, at the end, the scare quotes around "the crime of torture" lead me to suspect that your real problem isn't so much with an expansive definition of torture, but rather with the very notion of calling torture a crime to begin with. I sincerely hope that that's not your view. If it is, then I think you've got a far greater burden of argument to carry than you provide here.

Ontario continues:

"If you think, BTW, the world gives the Shin Bet, not Mossad, the benefit of a pass on it's techniques that go beyond giving the Jihadis 3 hot meals, leisure games, recreation, and a Holy Qu'ran book - you are on another planet."

I never said that I thought anything of the sort. I never even said that I think the world gives Mossad, or for that matter any part of Israel's government, a "free pass." All I asserted was that Mossad has experienced interrogators who are able to get actionable intelligence without resorting to waterboarding, stress positions, and the rest.

"The Geneva Conventions existed before WWII. What you are referencing is the 1949 Amendment, which adressed city-whacking, but had zero influence in Cold war strategy, where attack by nuclear weapons was not stopped by ACLU lawyers saying it was legally impermissable under Geneva to nuke someone, but by Deterrrence, Containment, and finally MAD."

The point I was trying to make about the provisions of the treaty that have to do with targeting civilian populations had nothing to do with whether those provisions had ever been invoked against the U.S., nor whether those provisions had any actual effect in preventing violence against civilian populations. So, your image of hypothetical ACLU lawyers trying to stop a nuclear war misses two important points. First, there never was a nuclear war, and second, if there had been, starting it would have constituted a moral crime of the first order, whether specifically forbidden by any international-law treaty or not. (That observation may be cold comfort for anyone who survived such a war, and there probably wouldn't be a Hague anymore to file claims in, but it would still be true.)

This seems like an important point to me in light of America's recent attempts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions. Doesn't part of the case our nation is making for trying to end Iran's (and, for that matter, North Korea's) nuclear programs rest on the claim that nuclear proliferation poses a risk to global security, not just the security of the U.S.? In other words, isn't there some sort of "moral high ground" the U.S. is trying to gain on this issue? If so, I think that that "high ground" is easier to gain if it's one that the U.S. also occupies in concert with other nations and vows to uphold in the form of treaty obligations. If all that the U.S. has to bring to the table is MAD (or, in the case of currently non-nuclear nations, AD), the obvious reaction is to accelerate, not curtail, nuclear development to save national face and to fend off threats to national survival. The Iraq war sent the message, intended or not, that non-nuclear nations get invaded, and nuclear nations don't.

What can be said and what must be said on torture can be read in a very old book: "Cautio Criminalis" by Friedrich Spe, written nearly 4 centuries ago.

Having lived in germany for 17 years, I know nothing but can act like I do with the best of people. I'm amazed that his Uncles knew that the American camps would not be like Nazi Concentration camps because I seldom met a German that knew about the Camps, even those living in Dachau.

The Time (Die Zeit) is a liberal weekly.

Der Herr appears to be about 50 years old. He would have known little about the 40's because he was not taught about WWII in the schools. Allies didn't want Hitler to reappear. Most families were caught in deNazification fears so spoke little about their experiences.

The British were being bombed at home and had suffered many years and had little food for themselves. Bomber Harris had impressed the average German with firebombs-Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg. The prisoners had to work for several years rebuilding Britian before they came home.

The French were even closer- divided between the ones for and against Germany. The against seemed to be in power after the war.

The Russians had lived through Stalingrad, long years of suffering and were not gentle to their own soldiers. A dead German was not such a logistic burden as the live ones.

The Americans were fighting a proxy war nothing got destroyed at home only loved ones were lost. Food and comfort were still comparatively plentiful. No one was having to help rebuild America. The German women were rebuilding Germany.

Who would you choose? After the War between the States it was different it took almost a century to rid Americans of North/South hate.

What this says to me is that the terrible torture that the Americans are going to be noted for, if "Ole Bush" has his way would not have even been a factor in the Uncles decision.

Red Stater, a particularly dense individual, writes about my statement: [The fact is that a majority of prisoners or POWs will break with coercive interrogation.]

"The discussion here concerns torture, not coercive interrogation. There are non-torturous coercive interrogation techniques the Geneva Conventions permit; the Mossad is apparently quite good at using them. You're confusing the issue."

No, it is your ignorance that misses the operative conventions on torture are under the Convention on Torture and International Human Rights law. Not Geneva. The operative treaties have tried to legally define torture as "cruel or degrading treatment" and "psychological torture" - leaving it up to the shysters of the Leftist NGOs and UN to define what psychological suffering, cruel and degrading means. THEY are the ones who claim panties on the head and any other means of coercive interrogation - cold, sleep depravation, playing Red Hot Chili Peppers, stress positions, bullying....all constitute "the crime of torture".

If you think, BTW, the world gives the Shin Bet, not Mossad, the benefit of a pass on it's techniques that go beyond giving the Jihadis 3 hot meals, leisure games, recreation, and a Holy Qu'ran book - you are on another planet.

More mutton-headed mutterings from Red State:

"One major reason why the Geneva Conventions even exist is because both the Axis and Allies did exactly what you describe here-- that is, direct indiscriminate violence against civilian populations."

The Geneva Conventions existed before WWII. What you are referencing is the 1949 Amendment, which adressed city-whacking, but had zero influence in Cold war strategy, where attack by nuclear weapons was not stopped by ACLU lawyers saying it was legally impermissable under Geneva to nuke someone, but by Deterrrence, Containment, and finally MAD.

I could really not care less what any european thinks, let alone the children of Nazis.

Europe is the true disgrace of the world, and we despise Europeans as much as they despise us.

The line of logic stating that we as Americans can not allow the torture of these muslim extremist terrorists is simply insane from my point of view.I defy any single American who thinks we shouldnt use such means to go over to Iraq, sit in the middle of Bagdad and hold a candlelight vigil. I guarentee with in 2-3 hours you will be kidnapped, held hostage, and then be tortured to death in a most brutal and savage fashion, before they behead you and throw your body into a ditch or hang it off a bridge. It will not even remotely matter that you may see this war as unjust, it will not matter that you think that "water boarding" or "forcing them to wear lingerie" is a horrible violation of the geneva convention. When they grab hold of you and start peeling your flesh off, I guarentee one of your last thoughts in this world will be that you want someone to inflict the same damage to them in the name of justice. See the difference between our American soldiers conducting these "light" measures of torture, and being tortured to death by these crazy muslim radicals, is that we do it for a purpose: to gain information that can save American lives. They happily torture our troops and civilians to death for nothing more than fear tactics and personal pleasure. The reason the nazi's wanted to be captured by Americans is that overall we shied away from torturing the average foot soldier, but let one have valuable information that could save American lives, we used the same techniques and worse then, than we do now.

Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff:

I appreciate your article and think you make very valid points. I am a lawyer practicing law in the middle of the country, and believe that if we fall to the temptation to replace the rule of law with the rule of men, the terrorists have succeeded, and we have failed. In the long run, we must keep our Constitutional values alive to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the world.

William Howard asks: "For those who claim that torture does not work what explains it's persistence through time and cultures if it does not produce results?"

Two things: The universal human capacity for cruelty, and intuitions about moral and political justice that predate those that underlie modern political and legal systems.

The first, I suspect, deserves no further comment. The second, though, is rather interesting. Long before our modern notions of the rule of law and universal equality before the law, systems of justice were only incidentally interested in ensuring that only persons guilty of crime were punished, and that punishments should only reflect the damage the criminal did to public order and the rule of law. Instead, punishment followed a rather grim logic. Criminals, e.g. murderers, inflicted a great deal of pain and suffering on their victims and those who cared about them; they created a rift in the communal fabric. The only way to repair the rift? Make the criminal suffer, and make him suffer publicly. It wouldn't do simply to do to the criminal what the criminal did to his victim; the suffering caused by the crime ripples out much further than that. Only a tremendous amount of suffering will do; hence torture. (The same principle lay behind the tradition of public executions like those of Joan of Arc, which, if I remember correctly, lasted well into the 18th century in Europe.)

So whether torture "worked" or not-- by which you seem to mean the question whether or not it produced reliable and actionable intelligence-- simply was beside the point for much of human history.

Chris, Pickering, Ontario writes:

"The reason police and military have interrogated since the dawn of history is that it works.

The fact is that a majority of prisoners or POWs will break with coercive interrogation."

The discussion here concerns torture, not coercive interrogation. There are non-torturous coercive interrogation techniques the Geneva Conventions permit; the Mossad is apparently quite good at using them. You're confusing the issue.

Ontario continues:

"Back in WWII, we were deliberately burning alive whole cities of Germans and Japanese to intimidate them. The numbers of civilians we have killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan in 5 years by accident - do not match the numbers of a typical nights bombing over Germany or Japan late in the war."

One major reason why the Geneva Conventions even exist is because both the Axis and Allies did exactly what you describe here-- that is, direct indiscriminate violence against civilian populations. The Conventions are thus an attempt to put some check on the utter barbarity of warfare. The U.S. signed it, I take it, precisely because it was able to own up to some extent to its complicity in morally objectionable conduct-- precisely the kind of moral honesty the Bush administration lacks.

Perhaps you find any attempt to put international-law checks on the brutality of war futile, or naive, or both. If so, I would suggest that both you and those who agree with you should lobby Congress to back completely out of the treaty that formed the Conventions. (Good luck with that, by the way.) By all means don't do what this President does, which is engage in the blatant hypocrisy that the most violent treatment that his Administration actively sanctions against terrorist detainees really isn't torture after all.

Ontario also writes:

"If you are worried about a "Nazified machine" of youth indoctrinated into an ideology glorifying violence since childhood, I suggest you worry less about American soldiers and more about radical Islamists."

I can't worry about both? This is simply a false dilemma.

"Nobody was talking about a clash of civilizations" during WWII? Apparently you are unfamiliar with the words of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler on precisely this subject. I knew it would not take long for someone to complain and snivell about the "demonization of the "Arab" or "muslim" as if there were no context for this alleged "demonization". Let's see: Somalia, Sudan, Chechnya, India, Kashmir, Southern Thailand, East Timor, Philippines, Ivory Coast, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Lebanon, etc., all these places have at least one common point: muslims are involved. Of course, they are precious people, very tolerant and open-minded, model citizens in their host countries and so very adaptable, why they can even laugh at Danish cartoons. One certainly shouldn't demonize the enemy, but rather, extend the helping hand of friendship, tolerance, and diversity. For those who claim that torture does not work what explains it's persistence through time and cultures if it does not produce results?

I have to agree with Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff (and won't bother responding to those dismissing him as a "nazi apologist"). The "war on terror" will never succeed against enemies whose identities and locations are secret, who can constantly replentish themselves, use primative technology, and have free reign in open societies to cause mayhem. The struggle with militant Islamist groups will not end until the ideology loses its appeal. That day has been forestalled by providing confirmation of the worst depictions of America in the form of Abu Ghraib et. al.

Soldiers in the Wermacht were uniformed combatants. They were therefore protected by the Geneva Conventions. Combatants such as spies or saboteurs were not uniformed combatants. They were and are not protected by the Geneva Conventions. Irregular combatants were not included in the Convention because the GC was largely an attempt to regularize combat between nations giving it some modicum of civility, and to allow the resumption of stability as quickly as possible after a conflict. It was not a feel good moral project but rather served very impersonal state interests.

We now have an enemy who has a main goal of disrupting stability. These are certainly not uniformed combatants either. In no way does the Geneva Convention apply to terrorists. On moral grounds I think we do need to limit our coercive behavior in interrogating them. The problem comes when you examine the extreme, albeit fairly unlikely, scenario. We have in our custody an individual who knows the location of a nuclear bomb that is going to explode in NY City. At that point can we morally justify not doing everything within our means to get that information? We need expressed rules that protect the dignity of these people as much as possible, but I am not willing to say that discomfort even in the extreme can NEVER be used.

Carolyn McCluskie - "Seven centuries ago, when her captors threatened to torture her, Joan of Arc responded that anything she said under torture would be inadmissible since it would have been gained under extreme physical duress. In other words, people will say anything to stop the pain."

Lefty crap.

The reason police and military have interrogated since the dawn of history is that it works.

Lefties can say all they want about how much smarter anyone unlucky or careless enough to be captured is compared to the trained officers interrogating them, how easy it is to deceive an experienced detective squad or military, paramilitary professionals who spend a lifetime picking bains.

The fact is that a majority of prisoners or POWs will break with coercive interrogation, and the ideal circumstances are to have 3 or more from the same unit or activity in custody so the stories can be cross checked. It is rare that one person can maintain a lie with consistancy vs. the truth being a constant - it is impossible for 3 prisoners separated to create identical consistent lies.

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Sarah - "His enmity of the Jews in particular was without provocation. Germany had lost WWI and neither accepted that defeat nor forgave those who vanquished it. Hatred of the Jews - its own citizens -- was traditional and was used to unite the country to support Hitler."

I don't see the author displaying enmity towards Jews. Perhaps by "his" you mean Hitler?

As for without provocation, unfortunately, as much as Jews wish to deny it, they were deeply, deeply involved in the Red Terror, in massive numbers far disproportionate to their population and confronted the West with the facts of tens of millions dead and calls to expand the carnage and terror westward made by Jewish communists.

This not only energized Hitler, but was a common concern among many Western Leaders about "The Jewish Bolsheviks". Churchill warned of the International Jew and the Jewish communists being the great enablers of Communism and the slaughter and the role of Jews in running the Checka, NKVD and creating both the White Sea Canal slave labor system and the Gulag system.

The truth is that without the real or perceived threat of Jewish Bolshevikism and Trotsky's stated intent to spread the Red Terror Westward...as Rosa Luxumberg and Bela (Cohen) Kun tried .....the Rise of Hitler would have been unlikely. The dislike of Jews was common in all countries of Europe...what changed was the Communist revolutions changed that dislike to fear...
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I find the authors remarks that the Americans were so nice to Germans but sooooo mean to Muslim enemies ridiculous. Back in WWII, we were deliberately burning alive whole cities of Germans and Japanese to intimidate them. The numbers of civilians we have killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan in 5 years by accident - do not match the numbers of a typical nights bombing over Germany or Japan late in the war.
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Grognard - "His stance is that Nazification had been underway for so long that it had thoroughly flooded the armed forces and even 16 year olds in 1944 were ardent supporters of the Fuhrer because they had been raised under his pervasive influence since 1934. Having absorbed Bartov's views regarding what it takes to covert a professional military system into a Nazified machine, one should seriously ask if the same influences are at work in our own military, albeit with different mechanisms and labels."

If you are worried about a "Nazified machine" of youth indoctrinated into an ideology glorifying violence since childhood, I suggest you worry less about American soldiers and more about radical Islamists.

"Do we really need to be preached to by a Nazi apologist? Would his uncles really be so shocked about so-called tortures if they realized what is at stake? The western world is fighting for its survival, Mr. Nazi! Get a clue!"

Love it! Absolutely hilarious!

Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff should not analogize the two nations: Superficially it could be argued that the US, because it was attacked, is torturing its perceived enemies to prevent further attacks. But Nazi Germany attacked Europe and prepared for a war that no one in Europe had provoked. His enmity of the Jews in particular was without provocation. Germany had lost WWI and neither accepted that defeat nor forgave those who vanquished it. Hatred of the Jews - its own citizens -- was traditional and was used to unite the country to support Hitler. The US has a functioning constitution, and the current president is claiming executive powers he does not actually possess. We will see how many American citizens will finally see what is happening in their country and the world.

Anyone wishing to comment on either issue raised in Herr Kleine-Brockhoff's piece would profit greatly by first reading Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (Oxford UP,
1991) by Omer Bartov. Bartov provides insights as to how the Werhmacht, despite tremendous losses which should have ruined its cohesion, still fought like devils up to the very end. His stance is that Nazification had been underway for so long that it had thoroughly flooded the armed forces and even 16 year olds in 1944 were ardent supporters of the Fuhrer because they had been raised under his pervasive influence since 1934. Having absorbed Bartov's views regarding what it takes to covert a professional military system into a Nazified machine, one should seriously ask if the same influences are at work in our own military, albeit with different mechanisms and labels. There are many similarities and one should not dismiss them out of hand, but give them serious consideration. One cannot argue with the facts; we have been shocked over and over with accounts of unlawful and cruel behaviour by our soldiers on and behind the line and, in my opinion even worse, the seeming acceptance of such behaviour by senior officers. We Americans are people, susceptible to the same corrupting influences as are any others. Let us not think we are immune because of our past.

After the USSR ended in 1989, defeated by its own self-contradictions, we felt that we had won.

It appears that we came away from our "victory" with the conclusion that the Soviets did one thing right: the Gulag system. This system of unregulated prisons in which persons were sent without trial and without appeal was horrible, and was chronicled in "The Gulag Archipelago", the great book by Solzhinizin.

Now, we have an American Gulag. This means that we have gone and become fascists.

This means that we are now the Great Satan indeed. And I am heartily and thoroughly ashamed of the Repukeliscum who have done this to the United States of America.

Dear readers,

I had tried to walk a fine line when I brought up my "Wehrmacht uncles". If I am beeing perceived as a Nazi apologist, well, then I have failed. So let me try a clarification.

One of my uncles was 16 when he was drafted in 1944. I never found out what he experienced, much less what he actually did in uniform. That was very common in postwar Germany. The deafening silence about the past was one reason for the student revolt in 1968 (I was 8 at the time). People wanted to know what their parents had done - and why. This desire prompted an age of investigation, of research, of public debate. I grew up in that climate. Surely, my uncle knew why becoming a Russian POW came close to the death penalty. As one reader put it: "What comes around goes around." Even at age 16 he must have had an idea what German soldiers had done to millions of Russians during the earlier phase of the war when the citizens of Moscow could hear the German artillery.

I was trying to answer PostGlobal's question in a personal way. The question was whether the proposed millitary commissions will expose American troops around the world to similar treatment. The answer is simply: yes, of course. What comes around goes around.

I am simply suggesting another yardstick by which to measure what makes Americans saver: If the terrorists (when faced with a hopeless situation) will want to give themselves up to American soldiers rather than anybody else it can be called progress. Then America is on the right track. The combination of military strength and moral authority will have won out. My uncle, I'm sure, learned from his experience as teen. Later, he understood that he had fought on the wrong side. The behaviour of the American soldiers he encountered enstilled trust in America in him. That trust carried him through the Cold War. The example shows: Decency can be an investment in America's future security.

I'm really surprised that many of the commenters here are too stupid to understand what Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff is saying.

He is telling us to look at what we've become and to maybe learn from the mistakes of the past. We can't be the moral champion of the world if we give ourselves a pass while preaching to everyone else about civility. If the subversion of our culture can be a measure of success for the 9/11 hijackers, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Lucy,

Very well thought post.

There wasn't the racialization and demonization of the German enemy in the same way that there has been of the Arab/Muslim enemy. Germans were white and Christian. Nobody was talking about a clash of civilizations and there was a sense that Nazi prisoners, although classified as enemies, were not another type of creature altogether. Not so with "the Arab" or "the Muslim" in the American popular imagination.

Ben, its idiots like you that prevent meaningful dialog. Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff is not a "Nazi"...he was a kid for God's sake. You are REALLY stupid. Go peddle your hate on Limbaugh's show. We dont want it here.

"Do we really need to be preached to by a Nazi apologist? Would his uncles really be so shocked about so-called tortures if they realized what is at stake? The western world is fighting for its survival, Mr. Nazi! Get a clue!" - Posted by Ben.

Mr Thomas wrote:

"Americans are not fighting for land or power but for values. Which is why they live by them. That's what I learned from my uncles."

Please tell that to the native Indians most of whom were removed by force from their lands, killed and almost annilihated.

While US governments were not as criminal as the Nazi regime (Native Indians might dispute this), they since the end of WWII have killed millions of foreign people with impunity.

People need to wake up and get familiar with their governments crimes that are committed in their name.

Dear Thomas

When I read your comment my thirst thought was that you were absolutely right. Now comes the cynical part and this reaction might be removed for it, but what I am going to tell you next are facts that can be verified quite easily on the net from different sources: This American president is the grandson of a banker, who helped finance Hitler untill 1942 and made a fortune doing so.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
The strange thing is however that hardly any American citizen knows about it.
GW Bush's (and dad HW Bush's and Reagans) highest advizer was Carl Rove(r), grandson of former Gauleiter Rover. At least you should know what that rank Gauleiter means, it was very high, directly commanded by Hitler himself.
I'm not saying that those grandchildren should be held accountable for what their granddaddies did. I urge all Americans to keep in mind the kind of environment those kids grew up in and the kind of doctrines they were taught to believe.
Last week the president admitted that the USA has CIA prison camps in other countries. Most people of those countries didn't even know that.
Let's face it, we almost live in a fascist state. Almost (just wait for the national id card) every move we make, book we read, what we say on the phone and what we write on the net is recorded.
Has anyone ever read and understood George Orwells "1984"?
Or do we think it was a sad, but good movie?
We live in it, we just don't want to believe it yet.

A concerned patriot.

Carolyn, thank you so much for the history of Joan of Arc as the original civil rights crusader and author of the Bill of Rights. I never would have known this trivia if it hadn't been for you. Her statements would have been "inadmissable?" Inadmissable to what, the stake she was burned on? Lmao

That there can even be a discussion about the use of torture, let alone a sitting president who advocates it and is willing to work his way around the law to allow it, is a sickening testimony to how low this nation has sunk under the Bush administration.
Seven centuries ago, when her captors threatened to torture her, Joan of Arc responded that anything she said under torture would be inadmissible since it would have been gained under extreme physical duress. In other words, people will say anything to stop the pain.
It is not only incredible but blood-curdling that the president of the United States wants the right to use "coerced confessions" as evidence. He'd be right at home in Medieval times.
He'd be right at home witch-hunting in Salem, too. Again, it is unbelievable and bone-chilling that the president wants the right to use hearsay evidence. "She's a witch! Burn her!" "He's a terrorist! Jail him and throw away the key!"
That so-called "Christians" not only say nothing, but actively support a president whom they seem to believe was sat on the throne by God is a living testament to the hypocrisy and evil that has been allowed to thrive under the Bush administration. What God would welcome such "Christians" to heaven?
The parallels to Nazi Germany are chilling indeed. But Bush has accomplished the seemingly impossible in far less time than Hitler did: he has convinced a supposedly "civilized" and "religious" population that torture is acceptable -- as witness the comments in these pages.

Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff,

Thanks for your well-expressed statement. You're quite right, I think, to emphasize the contrast between America's image in the world in 1945, and America's image now. Not enough Americans realize how much of our global influence, in the decades immediately following the war, was a result of our image, of what others knew that we stood for. Even leaving aside the moral considerations (which I take very seriously), it is unwise from a strictly practical point of view for America to condone torture, because any (dubious) advantage that it might give us in the form of useful intelligence is far outweighed by the damage it does to our image and thus, to our authority and our power and influence in the world.

Thank you for reminding us of how we were once seen.

Ben, you write:

"The western world is fighting for its survival..."

Tell me, what do you mean by 'the west'? Because if we become societies that accept torture as legitimate, then what I mean by 'the west' is already dead. By suicide.

I think no one here (beside Jim Oliver, a vet) did really read and understood what Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff said.

That tells a lot about the US...

This President has done more damage to the way of life that made America the country it was and does it hiding behind his religion. I am a verteran and NO torture is not the right way to go

"what goes around comes around", in translation "you got what you deserved".

You must be careful writing something like that. . . The same could be said for America, Israel, London, Madrid, etc.

Dear Thomas,
With regard to the German POW treatment at the Russian's hands an old cliché comes to mind, "what goes around comes around", in translation "you got what you deserved".
That lesson is easily forgotten in times of distress, and it is reflected in today's debate. Before this country was attacked in such dramatic fashion, 9/11/2001 it was easy for the general opinion to keep in check the opinion of the extremist cuckoos and therefore project the image of righteous warrior/nation. It is now that we have to actually prove that we are a better people, and as you can see from today's debate it is not easy, those extremist cuckoos are now emboldened. It is however the duty of all the responsible citizens to restore the balance of opinion in favor of "human rights pre BUSH the 2nd definition", for it is our fault that we let it slip to begin with.

Do we really need to be preached to by a Nazi apologist? Would his uncles really be so shocked about so-called tortures if they realized what is at stake? The western world is fighting for its survival, Mr. Nazi! Get a clue!

A German in Washington teaches Americans good Behaviour by quoting his Nazis-forbears:
My Wehrmacht Uncles Would Be Shocked By U.S. Abuses!!!
I am German and it frightens me terribly that my countryment are obviously going crazy once again.
Let me therefore speak on behalf of those Wehrmacht-Uncles who
"When the war ended they all hoped to be captured by the Americans. The best possible outcome of the war was to become a prisoner in an American POW camp"
and who
"if they were alive and could be told that Americans now torture prisoners they would not believe it."
I, however, feel sure that those Wehrmacht Uncles would tell Kleine-Brockhoff to shut up, read some history books and stop dreaming of a perfect world. Americans in WWII were humans and therefore most likely to be misdoing to the same extent as all soldiers within certain limits are misdoing under the circumstances and unimaginable pressures of war. In a POW world things are as simple as: Americans gave you more to eat and Günter Grass could leave the POW Camp in 1946 with the small fortune of $ 107.20 at his disposal. In other words, the WehrmachtUncles would tell Kleine-Brockhoff to stop moralizing and learn a little bit of the difference between how we all dream the world to be and daily life with all its possibilities of wrong turns with every choice we make.