Sen. McCain was right and the National Review Online is wrong. Politifact, the St. Petersburg Times’ truth-testing project (which this week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize), scrutinized Sen. McCain’s statement and found it to be true. Here’s the money quote from Politifact:
“McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as ‘water cure,’ ‘water torture’ and ‘waterboarding,’ according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning.” Politifact went on to report, “A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps.”
This issue arose when warmonger, chicken-hawk, neo-con apologist Ari Fleischer was left momentarily dumbstruck in this debate with Paul Begala. It didn’t last long. He quickly filled the silence with boilerplate partisanship.
Hmm. Much as I hate to belabor what ought to be obvious, there is a substantial difference between McCain’s true (but carefully phrased and potentially misleading) statement and what Begala said.
McCain:
” … following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding.”
Begala:
“We — our country executed Japanese soldiers who water- boarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime that we are now committing ourselves. How do you defend that?”
As a potentially less emotive analogy – it is surely true (I haven’t checked) that in contemporary US history we have executed a man convicted of rape and murder.
Hence, to paraphrase McCain, we have executed men convicted of rape.
But Begala’s stronger analogous claim would be that we have executed men for the crime of rape. That is not proven by the example above.
Are there examples of men we have executed whose primary (or most egregious) offense was waterboarding? Evan Wallach, cited in the Politifact research, cited no such examples, even though they would have strengthened his (already strong) case that waterboarding has historically been a serious crime. The most serious punishment he cited (that I saw) was a man sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor. Still pretty serious, obviously, but not execution, as Begala claimed.
Well. Begala made the claim – he ought to provide a name. So far, neither he nor his supporters have actually produced ann example that is correct as to execution.
That said, the argument that it is has been viewed as a serious crime is not in dispute.