From counterpunch
(PBU42)As news of a prisoner hunger strike finally begins to trickle out from Guantanamo, rest assured any wrongdoing will be pinned on a few bad apples. However, even a cursory glance at U.S. treatment of enemies captured during military interventions will demonstrate that the goings-on at Gitmo (or Abu Ghraib for that matter) are standard operating procedure for the home of the brave.
During the Second World War, for example, it required a mouthpiece none other than prominent racist Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. to expose American tactics in the Pacific. His sentiments are summed up in the following journal entry:
"It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or a soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Jap with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone. We claim to be fighting for civilization, but the more I see of this war in the Pacific the less right I think we have to claim to be civilized."
"When Lindbergh finally left the Pacific islands and cleared customs in Hawaii," says author John Dower, "he was asked if he had any [Japanese] bones in his baggage. It was, he was told, a routine question."
While the treatment of Japanese POWs was commonly little more than making sure there were no Japanese POWs, those Axis soldiers captured in the European theater often learned firsthand how good the good guys were.
"Before the invasion of Sicily, General Patton told his men to accept no surrender from enemy soldiers who continued to fire within the highly lethal 200-yards range," says historian Michael C.C. Adams. "At Biscari, U.S. troops killed thirty-four unarmed prisoners who had given up at the correct distance, but these GIs had seen buddies killed, and they didn't feel that a few yards made any difference...[Even] Audie Murphy told new men to take no prisoners and to kill Axis wounded."
