Payback's a Bitch
In Final Trip to Beijing, Bush Calls on
Premeir to "Tear Down This Wall"
--WaPo Faux Headline contest
_____________
A federal judge last week "awarded more than $65 million to several men who were captured and tortured by North Korea after the communist country seized the U.S. spy ship USS Pueblo during the Cold War" (USS Pueblo Victims Awarded $65 M.)
The USS Pueblo was seized off North Korea while it was on an intelligence-gathering mission on Jan. 23, 1968. The North claimed the ship was inside its coastal zone while the U.S. Navy contended it was in international waters.One of the U.S. ship's 83 crew members was killed and 10 others were wounded. The crew members, led by Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher, were released after 11 months of captivity and sometimes torture.
$65 Million because they were detained and tortured! Got it?
As an aside, the current Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) and the USS Pueblo incident share anther common thread, which is that U.S. servicemen are being sent into locations where they lack adequate support. The Pueblo was in isolated waters without proper defensive weapons or air cover on-call. Ditto the PWOT on a regular basis.
Skip Schumacher, 65, a lieutenant junior grade on the ship said in a September interview, "I think the crew has always wanted someone in the Navy to stand up and say 'Hey, you guys did a great job in a poorly conceived mission without any backup'" (40 Years After Capture, USS Pueblo Crew Reunites.)
Well, that is the good news (even though the NK will probably never pony up the funds.) The bad news arises from the other similarity between the two actions. All the detainees held at Gitmo, secret prisons and CIA black sites, and victims of extraordinary rendition will soon be up for their day in court. The U.S. isn't exactly flush right now.
Turnabout is fair play.
Labels: phony war on terror, PWOT, uss pueblo survivors awarded $65 million
posted by rangeragainstwar at 12:36 PM
7 Comments:
Viet Nam was a case study in micromanagement at all levels. The Pueblo incident took place during the Tet Offensive and the Pentagon couldn't handle two crises at the same time.
The Israelis shot up one of our spy ships, the USS Liberty, during the Six Day War the previous June with a far greater loss of life. However, that was quitely swept under the rug.
i came to meet cmdr bucher in san diego. he was a fine man, a good officer (small ship commmands are a prized award in the fleet, they are not given to dickheads).
his crew was given an undoable mission, then, abandoned when the bluff was called.
the resistence of the crew was astonishing (remember the group picture where they used international sign language to sign out "help" or the SOS morse code eyeblinks given by one of the filmed junior officers? that shit was awesome)
those were some hard fucking sailors, who didn't need bullshit courses like SERE to know what to do. the code of conduct was enough for them.
(p.s. it's a well known fact that i, to this day despise the experience i endured in SERE. those motherfuckers were a bunch of pissant sadistic bullies who taught this indin squid jackshit except that they were fucking assholes, which i could have and would happily pointed out to them in any fucking georgia bar. i had a great time serving on the "red" team in the jungle course we had in panama, i am not in anyway saying that the opfor personnel are a bad bunch, but, to this day, even overwieght and arthritic and old as i am, if i were to run into one of those SERE cocksuckers, i promise that mayhem would ensue)
Ah, MB -- I think I'm in love!
MB,
If you haven't read Jane Mayer's take on SERE (The Dark Side, pp.155-181) it sure sounds like yours ("it's a well known fact that i, to this day despise the experience i endured in SERE. those motherfuckers were a bunch of pissant sadistic bullies who taught this indin squid jackshit except that they were fucking assholes, which i could have and would happily pointed out to them in any fucking georgia bar."). CIA's (and later DoD's GTMO/Bagram) "enhanced interrogation programs" appear to be almost wholly derived from SERE. According to Meyer, a retired USG SERE psychiatrist who was a CIA contractor pretty much ran the entire show against Zubayda and the other AQ bigwigs.
FWIW, its taken me weeks to read this book because it is so damn infuriating, frequent mental pauses are necessary. At this point, it alone could stand as a chargeable criminal complaint.
SP
SP,
I believe that health professionals supporting interogation is a violation of professional ethics. Torture is a gross violation and reminds one of Dr. Death/ Mengele.It's all a subversion of civilized values.
One would think that the APA would refute and punish such activity.
The entire program is based on arrogance that has no military value.
jim
jim
Jim,
As it turns out, the APA has been engaged in a civil war over this issue for years now.
Despite the ballyhoo of many in the "mainstream media," what sank Brennan's chances for ODNI or CIA was not the spirited opposition of bloggers like Glenn Greenwald. Some 200 psychiatrists sent an open letter to BHO shortly before Brennan began his cry baby game and dropped out of contention.
And, like the doctors, I believe there should be disbarments and other professional sanctions against lawyers who used the worst kind of mob-gutter legal reasoning to provide any shred of legitimacy to the violations of US laws against torture and cruelty (not to mention habeus corpus). If Bill Clinton can lose his law license for 5 year for "mis-representing" his personal peccadilloes, then Davy Addington and Johnny Yoo can be disbarred for their legal malpractice (and this pretty much goes for any lawyer who signs up for the Federalist Society). Instead, Yoo is teaching future lawyers (!!!!!!) and Jay Bybee of "Torture Memo" fame sits on the US Circuit Court of Appeals!
Like Capone, if you can't get 'em for the big murders, get them for the malpractice (and I wouldn't be surprised to learn these government "servants" were also violating US ethics and tax laws too).
SP
phillipe sands in his brilliant work:
The Torture Team
bases much of his arguement for the disbarment and prosecution of shitheel lawyers like yoo and gonzales on the nuremburg precedents.
at nuremburg, lawyers who wrote opinions justifying the "final solution" and other atrocities were hauled up before courts and given what they had denied others:
due process.
if these cowardly (i believe that at the root of all this furor it was base cowardice in play. they were in a panic, and operating out of fear) assholes are so firmly convinced of the righteousness of their cause and the beauty of their actions then their course is clear.
present themselves to the world court at the hague and defend themselves.
still, on account of them being cowards and shit, it ain't gonna happen. they will only go kicking, screaming, and blowing snot. just like the innocents they snatched off of streets around the world and flew to dungeons in egypt, syria, bosnia, and romania.
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