Then It Was the Axis -- Now Us!

[Those of us who were children during WW2 were horrified by the terror, torture, and murders of civilians being carried out by Germany and Japan and to a lesser extent by Italy prior to and during the war -- which for us lasted only 4 years. My great regret back then was that the war ended too soon for me to join in and only long after did we begin to take seriously our own atrocities committed at Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki -- and Tokyo also where fire bombings killed more that the two nuclear attacks.

It is hard to believe the reportage below in which it becomes evident that U.S. lawyers and political officials played games around instituting the same horrors that millions had died to end off for all time back then when decent human standards were supposed to be operating in at least some parts of the democratic portion of the world. This is not to say that there were not covert operations running against undeveloped peoples here, there, and elsewhere. The rebellion against the U.S. in Latin America and against the European and U.S. corporations in the Middle East are well understandable in terms of the historic atrocities we committed against government struggling to become democratic in both these regions -- Chile's and Iran's which we brutally sabotaged in order to maintain our controls over same:

Chile - Allende ---> Pinochet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet

Mossadegh ---> Shah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadegh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi

As they say, those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it!

Ed Kent]

Notes Show Confusion on Interrogation Methods
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
The minutes of an October 2002 meeting give an
extraordinary glimpse of the confusion among government
lawyers about both the legal limits and the effectiveness
of interrogation methods.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/washington/18detain.html?th&emc=th
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
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