Churchill Did Not Torture? – Moon of Alabama

April 30, 2009

Churchill Did Not Torture?

"When London was being bombed to smithereens, (the British) had 200 or so detainees and Churchill said, 'we don't torture'," Mr Obama told a press conference to mark 100 days since he became US president.

"The reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts and, over time, that corrodes what's best in people. It corrodes the best of the country."
'We don't torture': Obama invokes Churchill, April 30 2009

"We don't torture," is what George W. Bush also said. But Churchill or Bush saying something does not make it true:

Prisoners complained thumbscrews and "shin screws" were employed at the prison and Dr Jordan's report highlighted the small, round scars that he had seen on the legs of two men, "which were said to be the result of the use of some instrument to facilitate questioning". One of these men was Hans Habermann, a 43-year-old disabled German Jew who had survived three years in Buchenwald concentration camp.

All of these men had been held at Bad Nenndorf, a small, once-elegant spa resort near Hanover. Here, an organisation called the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) ran a secret prison following the British occupation of north-west Germany in 1945.

CSDIC, a division of the War Office, operated interrogation centres around the world, including one known as the London Cage, located in one of London's most exclusive neighbourhoods. Official documents discovered last month at the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, show that the London Cage was a secret torture centre where German prisoners who had been concealed from the Red Cross were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with execution or with unnecessary surgery.
…
The inmates were starved, woken during the night, and forced to walk up
and down their cells from early morning until late at night. When
moving about the prison they were expected to run, while soldiers
kicked them.

The Brits covered up the whole story and after a secret formal trial let the perpetrators get away with it:

The appalling treatment of the 372 men and 44 women who were interrogated at Bad Nenndorf between 1945 and 1947 are detailed in a report by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward. He had been called in by senior army officers to investigate the mistreatment of inmates, partly as a result of the evidence provided by these photographs.

…
Four British officers were court martialled after Hayward's investigation. Declassified documents show that the hearings were held largely behind closed doors to prevent the Soviets from discovering that Russians were being detained.

Another consideration was admitted to be the determination to conceal the existence of several other CSDIC prisons.

…
The only officer at Bad Nenndorf to be convicted was the prison doctor. At the age of 49, his sentence was to be dismissed from the army. The commanding officer, Colonel Robin Stephens, was cleared of a charge of "disgraceful conduct of a cruel kind" and told he was free to apply to rejoin his former employers at MI5.

It seems that Obama wants to follow the Brits in this like he claims to follow Churchill. He wants to take the "shortcut" he is warning against.

Cover up where else and who else the CIA and the military tortured. Don't let people come in front of a court, but if one must, let them get off free to be available for the next round.

And be assured. The next round will come if these criminals do not get the punishment they deserve.

Posted by b on April 30, 2009 at 17:14 UTC | Permalink

Comments

According to this article, the British Army abuses at Bad Nenndorf occurred under Attlee, not Churchill :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/dec/17/secondworldwar.topstories3

Posted by: Black Bob | Apr 30 2009 17:34 utc | 1

i think it is importatn to note that not only has the united states practiced torture for a long long time – it is also the principal exporter of torture in the america, in africa, in south east asia
the school of americas was only one of the institutions that taught torture as political & military policy
torture is as american as apple pie
& we possess substantial evidence that in the enormous prison archipelago of the u s – torture is a quotidian practice

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 30 2009 18:08 utc | 2

@Black Bob – the Commander responsible for the torture and named in the Guardian article is one Colonel Robin Stephens. During the war, under Churchill, he ran MI5 camps in Britain, the “London Cage” the Guardian mentions was one of it. Wiki on MI5:

All aliens entering the country were processed at the London Reception Centre (LRC) at the Royal Patriotic School which was operated by MI5 subsection B1D, 30,000 were inspected at LRC. Captured enemy agents were taken to Camp 020, Latchmere House, for interrogation. This was commanded by Colonel Robin Stephens. There was a Reserve Camp, Camp 020R, at Huntercombe which was used mainly for long term detention of prisoners

The “reserve camp”, twenty miles west of London, was the “London Cage” where people were tortured during the war by Stephens and his minions.

Posted by: b | Apr 30 2009 18:08 utc | 3

Well, Obama did say Churchill did not torture while Londoners were being bombed…. You know, Churchill himself. So, does that weasel construction get Obama a “Not A Lie” card? Or a “Not Exactly A Lie” card?
See, it’s not as if he said the British government or intelligence agencies didn’t torture, right? Or their specific personnel….
Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Posted by: jawbone | Apr 30 2009 18:21 utc | 4

BTW, I did not know about the reports of these secret prisons and camps. I learn a lot here.

Posted by: jawbone | Apr 30 2009 18:23 utc | 5

Oh, and don’t forget Churchill’s note to General Ismay re: dropping poison gas on German cities (and ridiculing as “Psalm singers” those Christians who might object); he also wanted to do something with anthrax, too, I believe. In principle, Churchill and America were no different from the Nazis re: the murder of civilians. See, please, among other books, Ronald Schaffer’s “Wings Of Judgment: American Bombing In World War II” (Oxford, 1985). And of course there is America’s allowing more than 50 million abortions, the murder of innocent human beings in the womb* – 50 million being the approximate number of all those killed, on both sides, in World War II – 50 million being three times the population of Iraq whose dictator we said was the focus of all evil in the world because he killed an estimated one million people. We have shed a lot of innocent blood – which God says in His Word He hates. We are morally qualified to judge NOBODY!
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
* There’s more than a 9/11 in the womb, every day in America, round the clock, 24/7.

Posted by: John Lofton | Apr 30 2009 18:37 utc | 6

Yes, which is why mentioning the Bad Nenndorf centre at all is a distraction. A tight focus on the London Cage would have been better, or possibly a look at the torture policy that the British army operated during the Mau Mau uprising – both clearly things that were going on during Churchill’s watch.

Posted by: Black Bob | Apr 30 2009 18:38 utc | 7

The post-war torture was probably a treasure hunt for the looted millions, maybe (wrongfully thinking) the torture recipient was a nuclear scientist.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Apr 30 2009 18:47 utc | 8

@Black Bob – A tight focus on the London Cage would have been better
If you have any material about that please point to it or quote it. Why criticize the sources I use when you do not have better ones?
As far as I can determine the British Government is still hiding the records of the London Cage and the Guardian’s report on the FOIAed documents is still the primary source.
@CP – the Brits tortured before, throughout the war and after that at various places. It was just a ‘normal’ part of the ‘Rule Britannia’ colonialism. Just ask the Iraqis …
Indeed Obama holding up the last great colonialist as an example is a sorry picture.

Posted by: b | Apr 30 2009 19:13 utc | 9

When the King says, “Pass the salt”, ‘processing’ starts by word of mouth, rather than written edict, until all the salt is piled before Der Lord, then the victuals on the table, for its salt value, then all the sweat off the bodies of his hosts and retinue, then the salt forceably extracted from their blood, last the salts crushed from their bones, until at last the King sits upon a colossal mountain of salt, surrounded by a Kalahari of bone bits, tissue shreds and cooling ashes of his “People”. !!Viva Rex!!
Our solution is to morte the King, but who is the King? Earth groans in reply.

Posted by: Heironomous Bakti | Apr 30 2009 19:20 utc | 10

Try the wiki page for Alexander Scotland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Scotland
The seized first draft of the ms. of his book on the London Cage still apparently exists and contains damning details.

Posted by: Black Bob | Apr 30 2009 19:38 utc | 11

I should probably say now that I haven’t read the book for over 20 years now, but my recollection is that he talks quite openly about the same kind of “harsh interrogation techniques” used by the Anarchists in the SCW, by the Americans in recent years, and by the Saudi police since the year dot. And, come to think of it, he rehearses all the same excuses for doing so.

Posted by: Black Bob | Apr 30 2009 19:56 utc | 12

Let’s not forget Chuechill was the original gas-man of Iraq, as the Colonial Minister.

Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | Apr 30 2009 20:10 utc | 13

In the 1920s the British were imposing their rule onto people in what is today Iraq. In place of sending ground forces to control the Iraqis the British employed a more economical tool: air power. Churchill favored this and experimental work of “gas bombs,” including mustard gas. “In the end,” writes Herman, “the gas was not used. But Royal Air Force planes did regularly bomb Arab villages, killing terrorists [people fighting for independence] and civilians alike.” This in Churchill’s words, was about teaching “those Arabs on the Lower Euphrates a good lesson.” (p. 269)

—footnote

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.

–Churchill himself, The War Memorandum of 1919
I guess those “Arabs on the Euphrates” have not yet learnt that lesson (of submission and obedience to the divinely-ordained rule of the whitefellahin). it always amuses me to see the US press froth at the mouth and chew the carpets over the Dar-al-Islam concept, while simultaneously paying public officials to draft the PNAC documents: megalomaniacal dreams of world rule, all. … wandering OT here, why isn’t this personality disorder in the DSM IV? anyone want to help me draft a DSM V? it would include such dangerous mental states as nationalism, biophobia, gynophobia, manic techno-optimism, substitutability syndrome, growth delusion complex, militarism, micromanagerialitis, media affective disorder (forming deeper emotional attachments to media figures than to facespace friends and family)… the list goes on!

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 30 2009 21:59 utc | 14

Somatized paranoia. Hypochondria is derived from old models and is no longer descriptive.

Posted by: rjj | Apr 30 2009 22:59 utc | 15

b asked: Why again did the U.S. torture people? – while this can be read as mild sarcasm, the question also cuts to functionality, with why, in the sense of: with what aim in mind.
We hear so often (as I said before) that torture is not useful – and then the discourse stops, skirting ethics and neglecting other info. gathering techniques. Now, in ordinary life false confessions and false accusations serve, 90% of the time, to deflect away from the true perpetrator – in cases where some fault, violation, mishap, crime, etc. has occurred. (Other false accusations serve other goals. In fact the false accusation is the most primitive lie – children as young as 24 months are capable of it. It has not been observed in animals, though elephants do ‘false’ distraction to prevent mischief. But I digress wildly.)
In everyday life, false confessions are very successful, so *are* useful. (They work because they are close to what linguists call performatives: like a baptism, or a declaration of war, which can’t be true or false.)
The torture, what we know of it, began in o1/02, with the invasion of Afghanistan. Who was tortured? Muslims, Al Q members, suspects, terrorists, potential terrorists – that is the official version, and it is true, by definition. Why? Well, to extract false confessions, of course. Al Quaida / muslim terrorists were not responsible for 9/11, but having a few people confessing (see Khalid Sheik Mohammed, even if his confessions are perfectly nonsensical) serves the cause. Maybe it is as simple as that – get some confessions, of belonging to a ‘terrorist ring’, ‘al Q’, plotting to destroy buildings, etc. etc. Just like in everyday life, except in this situation, the confessors have to be coerced. Sometimes, simple is interesting or at least worthy of consideration.
but see r’giap at 2. and several other posts.

Posted by: Tangerine | May 1 2009 15:27 utc | 16

What is peculiar about Obama’s use of Churchill as an example is that his own grandfather was tortured by the British in Kenya. I’m unsure whether this was before or after Churchill’s return to power in 1951, it really is irrelevant.
Hugh Trevor Roper the historian argues,in the Seventeenth Century Crisis, that torture was largely responsible for the theory of diabolioc possession developed in the witchhunts. The same is almost certainly true of Al Qaeda: that most of what is ‘known’ about it has been fed back to interrogators under torture. And then, confirmed, again under torture. Now the torture is unnecessary: everybody understands what needs to be said. By such means phantoms become reality and the nightmares of authoritarian bureaucrats become evident truths.

Posted by: ellis | May 2 2009 1:05 utc | 17

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/nov/12/secondworldwar.world
“The secrets of the London Cage
· Beatings, sleep deprivation and starvation used on SS and Gestapo men
· POW camp in Kensington kept secret and hidden from Red Cross”

Posted by: Comes | May 2 2009 22:08 utc | 18

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