Ron Radosh

May 6th, 2009 2:28 pm

Hitchens and Torture in Britain: What Took Place During the War?

After President Obama’s last press conference, there was much talk about his citation of Winston Churchill, whom the president quoted to justify his opposition to waterboarding and other so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Even during the brutal German bombardment of London, the President said, when the British held Nazi agents in an internment center, Churchill’s view was that torture would not be permissible.

Now, joining in the chorus of praise for Churchill is none other than the former Brit, Christopher Hitchens. Writing in his Slate column, Hitchens points to a little known book, written in 2000, on a facility known as Camp 020, or Latchmere House. It was run by MI5 and administered by Col. Robin Stephens who made sure that the 400 Nazi operatives it housed were treated non-violently. In this respect, Hitchens calls the prison “extraordinary.” The truth, however, is that while Latchmere held 400, The London Cage, run by MI19, held 60 at a time, but had had a total of 3,573 prisoners who passed through it during its years of operation from 1940 to 1948!

And unlike Latchmere, the director of the Cage, more formally known as The Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, was Lt. Colonel Alexander Scotland, whose motto was “Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” referring to five interrogation rooms. All of the details appeared in a major investigative report carried out by The Guardian in 2005, that made waves in Britain.

At best, the evidence suggests that under Churchill’s reign, the British military had two very different facilities that used very different methods of interrogation. Hitchens notes that spies were not protected by the Geneva Convention, and that the camps did not even have to be reported to the Red Cross for inspection. That is why Latchmere was so unique. As Hitchens writes, “the need for timely information and intelligence was then a matter of national survival, and the temptation to cut corners must have been intense.”

His point is that they avoided going to such extremes, and nevertheless were successful, because Stephens ruled that “violence is taboo.” He acknowledges, however, that the death penalty hung over their head, and that alone could have been sufficient to get prisoners to talk. But he concludes: “it is precisely because the situation was so urgent, so desperate, and so grave that no amateurish or stupid methods could be used to taint the source.” Stephens could break the Nazis without torture.

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43 Comments

1. Professor Guvinoff:

Some things are worthy of Mr. Hitchens’ faith, whereas others are not. If you argue for the uncomparable reliability of science as a sufficient reason to declare the irrelevance of God, how about following the discipline of looking at the available evidence, like a true scientist is supposed to?

Atheism is quite a good example of man’s ability to take dramatic leaps of faith, for which Mr. Hichens deserves respect, at the minimum on pure humanistic grounds.

Please Mr. Hitchens, at least be faithful to your own principles.

May 6, 2009 - 4:15 pm 2. David Thomson:

“Could it be that he too, like other journalists smitten with Obama”

Christopher Hitchens seems to be just another guilt tripped white dude who is intimidated by the darker skin of Barack Obama. That’s the only theory that seems reasonable. I definitely get the impression that he’s going out of his way to avoid being called a racist. There is little doubt that Hitchens would be far more intellectually ruthless concerning Obama if he possessed blue eyes and blond hair.

May 6, 2009 - 7:39 pm 3. David Thomson:

“So we do not know whether or not Churchill approved or disapproved of his actions.”

It may not have been that clear cut. The odds are that Winston Churchill didn’t want to “know” what was going on. There was probably a tacit agreement that he would look the other way.

May 6, 2009 - 9:02 pm 4. Pajamas Media » Obama, Hitchens, Churchill, and Torture:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

May 7, 2009 - 1:41 am 5. BPT (Australia):

Radosh: 08
Hitchens: 00

I heard Hitchens on the radio speaking about Christianity, and he made so many factual errors I laughed my head off. He can’t tell the difference between the New Testament and the Old Testament, for starters, and appears to forget that the original Bible was not written in English.

Perhaps some Americans are intimidated by his accent and assume he is smart. I don’t. In any case, this piece demonstrates how easy it is to trip him up. Thanks!

May 7, 2009 - 1:51 am 6. T. J. Babson:

This is a Guardian article we’re talking about, probably written by a Seymour Hersh wannabe.

May 7, 2009 - 4:06 am 7. njcommuter:

To conduct a serious analysis, one has to look at the possible outcomes. Mr. Hitchens is not looking far enough to see that civilization is not a given like clean air, that will remain clean if only we will stop polluting it. Civilization is a clearing in the barbarian wilderness, and if we do not constantly hold the barbarians back, we will lose it, and it may never return. If we can be civilized in the center, it is because we use enough influence (persuation, threat, violence) at the perimeter to keep the barbarians out.

May 7, 2009 - 4:47 am 8. Fragmentarian:

Hitchens’ blind spots are becoming legendary.

May 7, 2009 - 6:04 am 9. bbb:

Left out of most accounts is the fact that the methods used in Camp 020 would not pass muster under current US law. The use of drugs/alcohol, the threat of imminent death, and the threatened infliction of severe pain, are all explicitly forbidden under Title XVIII. That’s why the lawyers had the interrogators explain to KSM that waterboarding wouldn’t kill him. It still worked, because when you’re being drowned, the promises of your interrogators may not be as reassuring as they might otherwise sound.

As for Hitchens, well, he’s at least had the integrity to undergo the waterboarding procedure. He seemed to think it was torture, although his account is more equivocal than the headline. He has an eccentric collection of prejudices (Mother Teresa=bad, Trotskyites=good?), but he does have a lifetime of experience looking into the face of evil…. ISTR he claims to be the only person to have been an official guest of the governments of all three members of the Axis of Evil — Saddam’s Iraq, Kim’s North Korea, and the mullahs’ Iran. I think he thinks any step in that direction, no matter how timid, bespeaks ill of us. So one of my eccentric prejudices is that I’ll give him a pass on this one.

BBB

May 7, 2009 - 7:02 am 10. Pastor of Muppets:

So now we’re discrediting Churchill in order to make the case that torture is necessary? Nice

Who won’t the Republicans smear, discredit, or throw under the bus in order to deny, deflect or justify illegal torture?

But I guess if soldiers are to be scapegoated and jailed for following the very orders that were handed down by Bush and Cheney, it’s pretty obvious that Bush and Cheney would throw absolutely anyone, including their own mothers under the torture bus to save themselves from being held accountable for breaking the law.

May 7, 2009 - 7:20 am 11. David Levavi:

Is this Christopher Hitchens, the former Lefty Brit now transformed into a conservative Yank? The Christopher Hitchens who didn’t discover until middle adulthood that he was Jewish? The Christopher Hitchens who for all his personal revelations and reversals remains an atheist and anti-Zionist? The Hebrew and Bible illiterate fool who laments the destruction of Egyptian cavalry in Exodus and has opinions on the Jewish holiday of Chanukah?

Compare the issues where Hitchens is consistent with those where he has reversed himself 180 degrees and you can’t miss the fact that this is a guy with serious identity and loyalty issues.

The worst of it is that Hitchens presumes to champion great men like Orwell and Churchill and ignorantly tilts at Catholic windmills. This fool embarrasses and undercuts even the causes he properly supports.

May 7, 2009 - 7:41 am 12. AThinkingPerson:

Two points: 1) Christopher Hitchens, 2) Slate magazine

Says all I need to know about integrity and factual reliability.

May 7, 2009 - 7:56 am 13. sheesh:

What about Hannity! You forgot Hannity. He’s the bravest of them all – volunteering to be waterboarded for charity. Who else has done that? NOBODY! Oh, Sean, I wish they would just recognize your courage for what it is. Sure, Ann Coulter says, “Half the men at FOX have been waterboarded” and she should know, she’s one of them. But do people listen? No! Oh, it’s just so unfair. The liberals are cowards! They make promises and then don’t keep them. That’s it . . . I’m gong to organize a Waterboard Party to go along with my Tea party. That’ll show them.

Who’s with me?

May 7, 2009 - 7:58 am 14. Don Rhudy:

Hitchens, like many extraordinarily bright and talented people, has rarely used his intelligence for critical thinking. If he did, he would not think the way he professes. He believes socialist silliness, and wastes his intelligence and talent justifying it in all his writing.

May 7, 2009 - 8:46 am 15. Joe Bison:

We “torture lite” a few guys and someone
uses a war where cities of civilians were
flattened and incinerated as a comparison?
This is just more of the same we are just
as bad or worse than they are BS used for
political purposes.

Hitch if you want “real” modern European
torture to compare with try the NKVD and
Gestapo. We fix an overflowing toilet on
the Sabbath[sorry Hitch] and we become
Charles Manson.

May 7, 2009 - 9:38 am 16. Chris H:

The Guardian??? That ultra liberal rag? Surely you’re not going to believe anything you read in there???

May 7, 2009 - 9:40 am 17. stevent12x:

I’m confused. Obama and Hitchens both praise Churchill for having a clearly stated policy of no torture and your argument towards this is “But what if he didn’t?” It seems like you and everyone else on this site have the simple tactic of throwing whatever smear you can imagine up against the wall and hoping that something – anything – sticks. This article wasn’t very convincing of anything at all and seemed to be very ill-thought out. Try harder next time please.

May 7, 2009 - 9:52 am 18. David Thomson:

“I’m confused. Obama and Hitchens both praise Churchill for having a clearly stated policy of no torture”

You obviously are not paying attention. The evidence clearly shows that rough interrogation was the norm. This is something the Obama administration, perhaps hypocritically, says it rejects. Also, we know that Nazi spies were physically treated in a harsh manner. Was Churchill being disobeyed—or did he usually prefer to look the other way? That’s the only real question. But we know this for sure: the Brits did not pussy foot around with captured German soldiers! And it is foolish for Christopher Hitchens to pretend otherwise.

May 7, 2009 - 10:10 am 19. dan:

anyone who has been associated with The Nation is auto-discreditting. hitchens never should have gotten any points for recognizing the self-evident evil of the islamist aggression.

May 7, 2009 - 10:19 am 20. Fred Beloit:

#10 offers proof that Lefty’s feel rather than think:
“So now we’re discrediting Churchill in order to make the case that torture is necessary? Nice
Who won’t the Republicans smear, discredit, or throw under the bus in order to deny, deflect or justify illegal torture?”
The source of the “smear” article referred to by Mr. Rodash appeared in the Guardian, a Brit newspaper I believe. It’s author, presumable being English, is probably not a Republican.

May 7, 2009 - 10:27 am 21. Fred Beloit:

Correction with apologies: Mr. Radosh.

May 7, 2009 - 10:29 am 22. Amos:

#20
There’s an awful lot of begging the question in that, isn’t there? For my part, I’m not at all bothered by a little rough treatment of German spies. I don’t know how many times it has to be said (and ignored) but the Geneva Convention doesn’t protect saboteurs. At least the written Geneva Convention doesn’t. Perhaps the living Geneva Convention does.

But some of this avoids a larger point. We might not have known what Germany was up to, but we did know where it was. We did know where, largely, their command and control was. We knew that if we bombed our way east from France or North from Italy, we’d hit Nazis. We did know that they weren’t going to use chemical weapons (though they toyed with it), they didn’t have any control over biological weapons and they didn’t have a nuke. We know none of those things in the case of the Global Jihad. Was Britain in peril? Yes. Was it in peril of sudden, catastrophic destruction? No.

It’s funny how Progressives balk at comparing our enemies today with our enemies of yesterday (they do so like to sniff at the Axis of Evil). Yet, they want to make that comparison in this case because they believe it makes Obama’s case. It does not. The nature of the enemy is different. They means and methods of the enemy are different. And the technology that may become available to the enemy is different.

May 7, 2009 - 10:57 am 23. Fragmentarian:

I’m impressed. Molester of Moppets is unable to read but can apparently still type complete sentences, albeit, utter nonsense. Does that mean that there was a million molesters of moppets pounding away on a million keyboards or was this truly an amazing feat? How exactly Radosh’s information descredits or is in any way demeaning to Churchill is, of course, unstated and unproven. The thinking of Molester of Moppets is what is actually tortuous. Everything must fit “teh narrative”. What a total maroon! What the molester of truth forgets is that, WE LOVE CHURCHILL!

May 7, 2009 - 11:36 am 24. Frank:

Maybe he was drunk

May 7, 2009 - 11:56 am 25. GClarke:

Anyone who opposes the torture of Nazis supports Auschwitz and all the torture that went on there and at all the duplicate Auschwitzes that littered the Nazi landscape. Those who would oppose the torture of evil men thus support torture in worse forms even that what is opposed. Get it? When the choice, and it is not a “false choice” no matter how often that phrase is beaten to death, is between torture to the first power and torture to the 100th power, you always have to choose the lesser of the two evils. To oppose the lesser evil is to promote the greater evil. I never supported Auschwitz. So I still support Churchill. The leftist mind is always lost on me.

May 7, 2009 - 12:57 pm 26. Marie Claude:

from the article :

“The Cage was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland, a forceful, outspoken man deemed to have the perfect background. Although English, the colonel had served briefly in the German army in what is now Namibia shortly after the turn of the century, and was later awarded the OBE for his work interrogating German prisoners during the first world war. In 1939, at the age of 57, he was recalled for service.”…

Security was provided by soldiers from the Guards regiments…

” a 27-year-old German journalist being held at this camp said he had spent two years as a prisoner of the Gestapo. And not once, he said, did they treat him as badly as the British. ”

of course Churchill knew about the London cage, but that’s something no rightful stateman would reveal.

The Brits were not know for their kindness, remember the South African Boers war.

I have stayed in a german family in Luebeck Travemünde, where I got a student summer job, the householder where I had a room told me that the Brits occupation after the war was one of the harshest, they would let the population litterally “starving” and with no heating, she also said that the women whose husbands still were war prisonners, had no means, they usely run behind the trains to get some lost coal from the locomotive. I still remember while working in a Düsseldorf english discotheque, the Germans were rude to the english staff and nice to me.
So I think that these 2 populations had still some strong anger against each others and would likely go to a revenge set if the opportunity occured

May 7, 2009 - 12:59 pm 27. Pastor of Muppets:

23. Fragmentarian:”How exactly Radosh’s information descredits or is in any way demeaning to Churchill is, of course, unstated and unproven. ”

When Radosh writes that “It is hard to believe, however, that the Government leaders would not have known anything about the activities taking place at those nice buildings at Kensington Gardens”, he is clearly implying that Churchill knew what was happening in the MI19-run London Cage and lied to the public about it.

I don’t know about you, but accusing someone of being a liar is definitely demeaning in my book.

22. Amos: “We did know that [the Nazis] weren’t going to use chemical weapons (though they toyed with it), they didn’t have any control over biological weapons and they didn’t have a nuke. We know none of those things in the case of the Global Jihad. Was Britain in peril? Yes. Was it in peril of sudden, catastrophic destruction? No.”

Amos, the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1941 hit many towns and cities across the country, beginning with the bombing of London for 57 consecutive nights. By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians had been killed by bombing and more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged in London alone.

I’d love to hear you explain how the actual daily bombings of London were less cause for drastic measures than a hypothetical future bombing of America. That’s akin to arguing that we have more cause to worry about a megavolcano than we do about cancer, because a megavolcano, despite its .0000001% chance of occurring, has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands more people than cancer.

May 7, 2009 - 1:06 pm 28. Fragmentarian:

Not to excuse treating the general population as combatants but perhaps they had a bit of a grudge against Nazis for starting the war and mercilessly bombing British cities, indiscriminately killing civilians. London, Coventry, V1’s and V2’s. Maybe they’d seen the death camps. Maybe they’d seen the films of these same men and women throwing themselves into a frenzy over their Fuhrer and his words.

May 7, 2009 - 1:08 pm 29. goy:

I’m not sure I see how it helps in any way to give Hitchens’ screed on this topic a wider distribution. He’s a brilliant guy, possibly a genius. But he’s also inconsistent and even irrational when it comes to topics like religion. As bbb notes, Hitch has been waterboarded himself. He seems to think this places him in a position of superior moral authority on this topic. It doesn’t.

Hitch is not a terrorist. He is not part of an organization bent on the annihilation or enslavement of America and all of Western Civilization. His stunt was excellent journalism, but simply because he was frightened out of his wits by the experience, it didn’t place him in a position of moral authority higher than those who shoulder the burden of ensuring security in a world filled with homicidal religious fanatics.

This torture issue is A DISTRACTION. The memos on this were released AS A DISTRACTION. The very notion that someone like KSM is even human IS A DISTRACTION. Can please we MOVE ON to something more relevant – like the dismantling of our Republic?

May 7, 2009 - 1:25 pm 30. The Shadow:

I guess I cannot get beond the fact that torture is evil. You guys want to get into the stye with other practioners like Pol Pot. Great for you that you do not see the irony of using the same arguments as our enemies.

May 7, 2009 - 2:07 pm 31. Dave:

Master of Puppets never fails to fail. He’s the gift that keeps on giving I guess.

The point of the article is to question why Hitchens and the other Obama worshipers are running with a point that is shakey at best from a source that has become about as irrational as you can get. (that source being Andrew Sullivan.) I don’t see this as an attack on Churchill. I for one wish we had a governing administration that could keep security secrets off the front page.

And the bigger point is that now we have an administration that would much rather score political points than protect the American people. These methods in the way used are torture only in the minds of people who are looking for a political weapon. And now every person who is charged with protecting the U.S. from mass murderers must look over his shoulder to be sure he does not have a political target painted on his back and our enemies know we can be easily minipulated with bogus charges of torture.

I agree with Goy. This is a distraction.

May 7, 2009 - 2:23 pm 32. Avitar:

Christopher Hitchens seems to forget that back in the forties “Police Methods” included everything that even the wildest accusations against the Bush administration include and more besides. The police “third degree” is more Abu Grad than GITMO.

The Cage was not the only place that the British during WWII were rougher than every thing George Bush authorized. He is just shoring up his Liberal credentials.

May 7, 2009 - 2:32 pm 33. Brian Richard Allen:

Doctor Radosh suggests that whether or not Mr Churchill knew about the details of both internment camps, Mr Hitchens certainly does and asks why Mr Hitchens, by writing only about the camp that used soft methods and ignoring the better known camp’s use of torture?, thus lies by omission.

The simple answer, of course, is that Mr Hitchens is a Leftist and lying is as lizard-brain automatic to Leftists as is breathing. And the slightly less simple answer is that Mr Hitchens, a cult-follower* of a an inevitably tyrannical form of totalitarianism has no choice in the matter. Given that Leftism, including by its any other name, descends from lies and that everything ever uttered in its defense is, needs be, a lie, such men as Mr Hitchens become so habituated to lying, many of them for a living, as to lose any ability to tell a lie from Truth.

*”Cult,” advisedly. For if the definition of a cult includes that its adherents can look at its every and inevitable failure and still be convinced of the infallibility of its dogma — and perhaps even swoon and/or get leg wobbles upon catching even a passing glimpse of its Shicklegrubers, Maos, Mussolinis and Obambis — the most certainly, “Leftism” – in its every evil manifestation (“Socialism,” “Progressivism,” Communism, Fascism, “Liberalism” etceteras) – is a cult.”

Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles – CalifOBAMBIcated 90028
And the Far Abroad

May 7, 2009 - 3:22 pm 34. Malcolm Coote:

If these interrogations took place during and after WWII, then not only Prime Minister Churchill would have been aware of them but also Prime Minister Atlee who replaced Churchill in 1945.

May 7, 2009 - 5:57 pm 35. Self-hating Boomer:

The logical fallacy that Hitchens is stepping right into is conflating the effectiveness of torture with its moral defensibility. These are two totally separate and unrelated questions, and since he can’t win the moral argument, he cuts a few corners and tries to claim that the non-violent methods are always more effective.

This is kind of analogous to the profiling argument. Racial/ethnic/religious profiling usually doesn’t get as good results at picking a terrorist out of a crowd as behavioral profiling. That’s why El Al primarily uses behavioral profiling. But don’t think they don’t notice what nationality and religion that you appear to be. But regardless, effectiveness is a completely separate question from whether or not it’s an acceptable practice.

May 7, 2009 - 8:08 pm 36. bbb:

#10, #26 Muster of Poppets: Here again we have the cultural divide. In my book, being tough on Nazi spies (up to and including execution) — and keeping his mouth shut about it — RAISES my estimation of Churchill. Only in the Leftist bizarro world would it be a compliment to say that the leader of a country was a spineless wimp who was clueless about abuses performed by underlings, and who would have blabbed it all to the news media of the day if he had known.

And this is a big problem with Obama and the Leftist oligarchy. They have NO CLUE what it takes to defend this country. You need look no further than the F-22 cancellation to find proof of that.

BTW I’m not sure what the “lie” you’re referring to is. Churchill never said “We don’t torture”. That was Obama lying, not Churchill.

BBB

May 7, 2009 - 9:38 pm 37. Edward Norden:

Anybody as cordially despised by the Nation and the Guardian as Hitchens is can’t be all bad. That said, he has a ways to go before serious readers need to always take him seriously. This effort on “torture,” Churchill and the Brits is a case on point. Ron does well to bring up the Cage, which Hitchens ignores and which Churchill had to know about. Even more important, Hitchens leaves out the vital fact that the Brits early on cracked the German Enigma encryption machine with their Ultra program. They and the U.S . fought the Nazis like a poker player who has a confederate with a mirror behind his opponent. There was little any captured German could tell which Ultra couldn’t. How vast the difference between that situation and the one faced with al Qaeda especially right after 9/11 as NSA’s eavesdropping satellites notwithstanding we groped in the dark against the clock to learn how the Islamofascists were organized. And so Hitchens’s analogy is false, as he himself must know. As for British “humaneness,” it would come as news to the civilians of Hamburg or Dresden, whose incineration Churchill greenlighted, not to mention the Irish who fell into the hands of the Black and Tans on the 20s, the Palestinians the hands of British military intelligence in the 30s, the Zionists the hands of the C.I.D. in the 40s and the Mau Mau in the 50s. A former Brit, Hitchens must know what “a dozen or two of the best” means. That’s how things were done in a great and relatively civilized empire, the one which Churchil strove above all things to save. When Obama resorts to Churchill as he did, we forgive him—it isn’t a politician’s job to tell the truth, far less put it in context. But Hitchens styles himself an intellectual. Why does he sometimes choose dishonesty? Can it be that he’s still not cured of his youthful infatuation with Lev Bronstein?

May 7, 2009 - 9:53 pm 38. Class Clown:

Wow,

Some people can’t even read an essay. This had nothing to do with discrediting Churchill, and everything to do with discrediting Hitchens.

Hitchens is the sort of guy that is often insightful right up until you run into one of his blind spots. His biggest one is Christianity, which he hates so deeply that he turns into a raging lunatic every time the topic comes up. Apparently, here we have another.

May 8, 2009 - 5:16 am 39. D. Grant Chee:

” Torture light ” was a term someone used in an earlier post. Excellent choice of words.
We are stumbling toward a war where torture will be common place and only the tortured will whine. Soldiers will resort to war; a
chaotic hell where the tactic known as ” Take no prisoners ” is the kindest form of torture. Israel is currently the only civilized nation on earth facing what is coming for the rest. Only my opinion. Vet.

May 8, 2009 - 9:00 pm 40. briinn:

So by avoiding any mention of The Cage, which I assume Hitchens must know about, he gives the impression that under immense pressure and the most dangerous conditions…

In this case poor Hitchen’s reveals how deeply flawed his atheistic beliefs have mired his ability to reason. Trying to make something good out of something bad.

What is immediately clear to me is that any society with the will to survive during war, eventually resorts to some forms of torture to gain an advantage over the enemy. To believe otherwise is laughable at best and foolish at worst. I also cannot imagine any society printing pamphlets on the torture methods du jour and passing them out to inform the populous at large while giving the enemy a look-see as well.

Hitchen’s enjoys sharing his naïve view of the goodness of mankind which has a blindsiding effect on him. For instance, his stance on anything Christian: He manages to leave the impression of a seething cauldron of hate as he yowls about the evils of Christianity all the while resembling a lunatic. The saying comes to mind, “To rage against the machine (Christ).” I find Hitchen’s pitiable.

May 9, 2009 - 10:19 am 41. nyomythus:

Apparently, here we DON’T have another. Hitchens does mention the ”ticking bomb” scenario.

May 9, 2009 - 11:01 am 42. Nino:

Hitchens refers to himself as a polemicist which means that parsing his sentences looking for truth is a waste of time. He’s basically a hack attack dog for some ideology–democratic socialist seems to fit him best.

May 9, 2009 - 1:05 pm 43. Mike_K:

#26, In 1977, on a visit to London, my wife and I did the tour of Commons that was available on Saturday mornings until the IRA blew up the Home Secretary in the garage. We were standing in a long line that stretched far beyond Westminster Abbey across the street. A tall man came along the line and asked us if we spoke English. When we answered yes, he said “Come with me.” He took us to the door at the head of the line and said , “Wait here.” Every few minutes, he would reappear with another couple. We finally figured out that he was collecting the English speakers from the line. He was a guide, a retired policeman. Eventually, he explained that he was collecting the English speakers to avoid the Germans, who at the time, were apparently a major component of the tourists who wanted to see Parliament. It was a wonderful tour; he had been assigned to Parliament during the war. I was also struck by his persisting hostility to the Germans 22 years after the war ended.

That generation is almost gone but I doubt many changed their minds or worried about torture. The concept that avoiding harsh interrogation of the terrorists would somehow protect our own captured soldiers is ludicrous. The German POW camps had a low mortality rate; the Japanese a high mortality rate. The mortality rate of captured US soldiers in this war has been 100% with a rare exception or two.

May 13, 2009 - 7:03 am