Newsbusters and The Corner shouldn't pick fights with Paul Begala
April 24, 2009 2:24 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
At least not when facts are involved.
Recently on CNN, Begala, discussing the topic of torture, made this point:
Our country executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime that we are now committing ourselves. How do you defend that?
Mark Hemingway at NRO's The Corner claimed Begala got the facts all wrong, and then Newsbusters chimed in, too. Begala was making stuff up about torture!
The irony is that right-wing outlets really have a beef with Sen. John McCain, because he's the one who's talked publicly about how Japanese soldiers were executed for torturing--for waterboarding--American POW's.
"...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."
That was McCain, on November 29th, 2007, at a campaign event in St. Petersburg, Florida. PoliFact.org quickly looked into McCain's claim and noted:
In a recent journal essay, Judge Evan Wallach, a member of the U.S. Court of International Trade and an adjunct professor in the law of war, writes that the testimony from American soldiers about this form of [water] torture was gruesome and convincing. A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps.
We find McCain's retelling of history to be accurate, so we give him a True.
So NRO, tell us again how "Begala certainly doesn't know what he's talking about."
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They are saying he got his facts wrong because they are claiming that what we have done is not torture. And it's not torture because we did it to our own soldiers.
What we did to our own soldiers is demonstrated to them what torture is. In order to do that, we had to use torture techniques on them. Torture is not just what you do, but why you do it, how you do it, and who you are doing it to.
When we did it to terrorists, we were torturing them.
There actually is a good rebuttal against Begala--
Japan was waging a full-fledged war against us that they started. The waterboarders were also killing people left and right-- prisoners executed all the time, etc.
The parallel between Japan and the U.S, is not a good one. The extent of the torture was much greater. Plus, how many waterboarders did we execute for this reason-- it was like one, wasn't it?