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How Bio-Weapons Led To Torture … And North Korean Nukes
In Why North Korea Needs Nukes – And How To End That we pointed to the utter destruction the U.S. and its allies waged in the war on Korea on all parts of the country. That North Korea seeks "weapons of mass destruction" is quite understandable when one takes into account the hundreds of thousands tons of napalm used against it. But even Napalm and the criminal destruction of North Korean dams were not the worst depravation the U.S. applied. Biological warfare agents, primarily anthrax, were dropped over North Korea and China and killed civilians. The U.S./UN command denied such use and covered it up. One consequence of that cover up was the development of torture methods in the U.S. SERE pilot training programs and their later proliferation into criminal abuses in Guantanamo, Abu Graibh and elsewhere. An important piece of evidence of this trail was recently and for the first time re-published on the web
In the 1950s war on Korea heavy air to air fights were waged near the Chinese border which led to significant losses of airplane on both sides especially along the MiG Alley:
USAF pilots nicknamed April 12, 1951 "Black Thursday", after 30 MiG-15s attacked three squadrons of B-29 bombers (36 planes) escorted by approximately 100 F-80s and F-84s. The MiGs were fast enough to engage the B-29s and extend away from their escorts. Three B-29s were shot down and seven more were damaged, with no casualties on the communist side.
On "Black Thursday" and other occasions U.S. bomber pilots were captured. Some of them admitted to have dropped biological weapons over China and northern Korea. Their confessions were published in writing and publicized on Korean, Chinese and Russian radio.
The U.S. (UN) command under U.S. General MacArthur denied any use of biological warfare agents. It claimed that the downed pilots were tortured to give false confessions.
Since World War II the U.S. Airforce and Navy had established training courses in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) for pilots that might be captured by enemies. During these courses interrogations were staged to provide realistic training. After the Korea War anti-torture training was added. Torture of "prisoners" was "simulated" with the trainees. Decades later, during the war of terror and on Iraq, the CIA hired two psychologists as "behavioral science consultants" from the SERE training staff to teach its agents how to use torture on prisoners. The absolutely inhuman and dangerous methods those SERE "experts" devised proliferated to the U.S. military which, together with the CIA, used them on alleged enemy combatants in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other places.
According to the Senate Armed Services Committee Report (pdf) on U.S. torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and CIA black sites, SERE techniques originated in Chinese Communist methods in the Korean War employed to extract false confessions from captured U.S. personal.
(During the 1960s the CIA itself developed additional "scientific" torture methods and published them in the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation and Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual. U.S. personal as well as several south American militia were trained in and used these abusive and illegal methods.)
The torture training at the SERE schools and the abuses were all based on a big lie.
The U.S. had used biological weapons in the Korea war. It also used chemical weapons and suppressed investigations into it. Its pilots dropped bombs with biological warfare agents over China and Korea. Theirs were not false confessions extracted by Chinese Communist methods. The captured U.S. pilots were telling the truth.
The SERE torture resistance training and its abuse are based on the bigger lie about the non-use of biological agents in the war on Korea.
(The Geneva Protocol of 1925 generally prohibited the use of biological agents but the specific Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was only developed and signed in 1972.)
The U.S. and UK developed extensive biological warfare programs during World War II but those weapons were not put to use in the European theater. The Japanese used biological weapons, with mixed success, in China and elsewhere. At the end of World War II the Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 was taken over by the U.S. military:
[General] MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants—he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation. American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including reading and censoring their mail. The U.S. believed that the research data was valuable.
During and after the war on Korea the Chinese government alleged the use of biological weapons on Korean and Chinese civilians by the U.S. The U.S. denied. A commission was called upon to investigate:
To convince the world of the truth of their claims, the North Koreans and Chinese, sponsored a purported independent commission, using the auspices of the World Peace Council, gathering together a number of leftist scientists from around the world. Most surprisingly, this commission, which came to be known as the International Scientific Commission, or ISC, was headed by one of the foremost British scientists of his time, Sir Joseph Needham. The ISC travelled to China and North Korea in the summer of 1952 and by the end of the year produced a report that corroborated the Chinese and North Korean claims that the U.S. had used biological weapons in an experimental fashion on civilian populations.
For a long time the commission's report and its appendices with the witness statements were suppressed and not available online. Jefferey Kay, a psychologist and author living in northern California, dug them up and recently published them (recommended) on the web for the first time. You can read them here:
Sir Joseph Needham was blacklisted by the U.S. during the McCarthy anti-communist campaign.
Needham's investigations have since been confirmed by other scholars investigating the general case:
It is the purpose of this article to consider the validity of these [U.S. military denials] in light of the research which we conducted in preparing our recent book, The United States and Biological Warfare: secrets of the Early Cold War and Korea. In that book we conclude that the United States engaged in large-scale field tests of biological weapons against the Asian countries and with some additional evidence we continue to believe that is the case.
General MacArthur, one of the foremost war criminals ever, covered up the war crimes of the Japanese and especially of Unit 731. He took care to integrate the Japanese biological weapon experience into the U.S. military resources. Under his command biological agents were then used against Korean and and Chinese civilians and military units. When his pilots confessed, he denied all such reports and alleged "brainwashing" through torture by the Chinese. This again led to torture "simulations" in U.S. SERE training from which recent U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere derived.
U.S. media and the public have a general amnesia whenever it comes to U.S. war crimes – no matter how recent. The Senate report on CIA torture in Iraq and elsewhere is still suppressed. But U.S. war crimes do not end. Whenever "threatened" with compromise, the U.S. tends to seeks the belligerent way. As Noam Chomsky reiterates in relation to the current campaign for another war on Korea:
[V]ery strikingly [..] there’s one lesson that you discover when you carefully look at the historical record. What I just described about North Korea is pretty typical. Over and over again, there are possibilities of diplomacy and negotiation, which might not succeed—you can’t be sure if you don’t try them—but which look pretty promising, which are abandoned, dismissed, literally without comment, in favor of increased force and violence.
For an example see this influential sitting U.S. Senator who argues for "preemptive" strikes against North Korea's missile program without any regard for the people who's life would be destroyed by them:
“It would be bad for the Korean Peninsula. It would be bad for China. It would be bad for Japan, be bad for South Korea. It would be the end of North Korea. But what it would not do is hit America and the only way it could ever come to America is with a missile.”
Considering the historical record of the United States of committing and covering up warcrimes as well as its general belligerence, North Korea and other nations are probably well advised to stick to their nuclear and missile programs.
@ Posted by: Debsisdead | Apr 27, 2017 9:55:55 AM | 3
We armed, trained and equipped the Kuomingtang(KMT) in China during WWII, including the ‘legendary’ Flying Tigers (early modern Mercs/Private Contractors) to predominantly fight the Japanese (Imperial Japanese Army (IJA)), especially from 1942 onwards. But as WWII wound down that support switched to enabling Chiang Kai-Shek as our intended Sino version of Cubas ruthless dictator, Batista, to govern over China as a to be Uber-exploited version of then Cuba, thru direct involvement in the Chinese Civil War to destroy the Evil Chicoms.
Roosevelt, Churchill & Chang Kai-Shek met at the Cairo Conference in 1943 to agree upon and enable precisely that policy once Imperial Japan was defeated. Note: Stalin, ie USSR, was not invited.
After the Japanese surrender, the end of WWII, we airlifted KMT troops throughout China to seize the weapons of the IJA to deny them to the Evil Chicoms. We deployed ~50,000 Marines & ~100,000 US troops to secure strategic assets on behalf of the KMT. US troops were on guard duty side by side with armed ‘surrendered’ former IJA troops on behalf of KMT, post WWII !
During the Chinese Civil War, we trained & equipped 50 KMT divisions (~500,000 troops) fighting the Evil Chicoms and provided primarily military aid of ~$4.5Billion USD (In 1940’s dollars!).
The Flying Tigers were used to attack the Chicoms & support the KMT after WWII during the Chinese Civil War as they morphed into the then precursor to the CIAs subsequent ‘Air America’, throughout Indochina and elsewhere (Latin America, etc). They bombed and strafed non-KMT forces in China right up until the end of the Civil War in ’49.
From ’49 to at least ’58 we financed/armed/supported ‘Chinats’, KMT guerillas/terrorists numbering up to ~10,000, inside and on the borders of China (primarily from Burma).
In Sept of ’45 we militarily occupied Korea below the 38th parallel (SK) and imposed a US Military government and killed between ~30,000-100,000 SKs in the intervening period ‘prior’ to the Korean War in ’50. In the early stages this was again done in conjunction with armed ‘surrendered’ IJA troops. Former Korean IJA officers/troops/etc and businessman and collaborators were integrated into the the imposed US military occupation.
China entered the Korean War when the US/UN Command invaded NK, crossing the 38th Parallel in direct defiance of China’s declared ‘Red Line’. As a party in the Korean War, given an incomplete military only armistice, is China still technically also, like NK, ‘At War’ with the US/UN Command ?
Sponsored covert ops and terrorist/guerilla attacks continued on China thru to 1971.
Then of course there is the arming and support of Taiwan since ’49, thru to today …
There has been no direct military-to-military engagement/liaision/co-operation between US and China of consequence from ’79 thru to today. The sanctions imposed on China re Tianmenn Square (’89) are still in force today.
China will leave any NK ‘strike’ retaliation up to NK. Tho if there is an invasion again, crossing the 38Th parallel into NK, then China will go to War again.
In essence we fought on the other side against the winners of the Chinese Civil War, both during and after, armed/financed/supported and provided diplomatic cover to the losers, the KMT, to this day, and have fought a hot war against China from ’45-’72. We allied with and armed the Japanese, the peoples enemy of both Korea (NK/SK) & China for decades prior, circa 1911 & 1931 onwards, in the modern era, respectively.
Its been a Cold War with China, in military terms, ever since ’72, regardless of ‘trade’ & ‘Detente’ … which didn’t end in ’91 as for the USSR. We’ve sponsored islamic terrorists in the Xinjiang region of western China since at least 2008…
And the Chinese government and certainly the Chinese themselves have very definitely, not forgotten, any of the above, regardless of endless disinformation and misreporting in the MSM.
@ Posted by: dumbass | Apr 27, 2017 10:48:44 AM | 6
If the intended purpose is to obtain actionable intelligence:
1. Torture does NOT work. Fact, & 2. Coercive interrogation does NOT work. Fact.
If the intended purpose, the supposed clinical ‘positive ROI’ you refer to, is to either ensure the destruction of the ‘being/identity’ of an individual and terrorize and control thru fear, horror & brutal inhuman intimidation of a wider populace ? For that is what it has always been used for. Not Intelligence collection. In that case, re such a calculation re widespread proliferation since 9/11, there is no Rule of Law whatsoever, and society (and a professional military) descends to the barbarism & inhumanity of the Middle Ages, and Torquemada … we may as well approve of & endorse incest & cannibalism, what the hell, heh ?
So much for Freedom & Democracy, Truth, Justice & Liberty !
The most effective interrogator in the modern era was a diminutive be-spectacled bookish Gestapo officer in Western Europe during WWII. His technique ? Simply conversed in a friendly manner re social trivia, over biscuits and tea/coffee with totally isolated, tho otherwise satisfactorily treated POWs, over many sessions, until rapport and trust, a form of friendship/social dependency was obtained, then subsequently skillfully obtained key intelligence from said POWs virtually voluntarily.
If remembering’giap was here he could vividly enlighten re the subsequent lifelong traumatic perspective of the survivors/victims. My knowledge re the post is not theoretical nor academic. The events re ‘proliferation’ re Petraeus/Abu Ghraib are why I went ‘online’ at MOA and the reason for my chosen ID.
2c is up, rant over.
Posted by: Outraged | Apr 27 2017 16:07 utc | 14
@ Posted by: les7 | Apr 27, 2017 12:53:33 PM | 17
Mistated. Should have been from days of Billmon/MOA. Deja Vu … detailed discussions 13 years ago … Groundhog Day … so f*@king depressing 🙁
Peace. Salaam. Shalom. To you, Brother.
@ dumbass
In no way meant to project/assert ‘approval’. No negative inference or criticism intended.
Merely further clarification/insight re the myths. However, in reality as opposed to fiction/Hollywood/propaganda/misinformation:
Another calculus re a ‘clinical ROI’ that is not at all well known nor understood, nor ever considered, is that with a modest number of exceptions, those who inflict torture & coercive interrogations, for any significant period of time, and to a lesser degree in the military context the MP guard force members present as enabling ‘conditioners’ and guards/escorts, often suffer the very same psychological/mental health, though obviously not direct inflicted physical, lifelong traumas as the ‘subjects’ subsequently as well. Along with, indirectly, their families/relatives/employment prospects/etc. Tho who has much sympathy for traumatized torturers, hm ? The infliction of Torture often even offends the perpetrators soul, basic humanity, to the core, even if it is mentally suppressed/buried deep & takes years to surface.
‘Invictus’/’Jeffery Kaye’, may also have covered this on his site, and as psychologist studying the topic would also be able to speak to it, far more eloquently.
No alleged. Use Google: See ‘School of the Americas’. See ‘Savak’ in Iran. In Vietnam, there is no ‘alleged’, etc, etc, etc.
What changed re the War on Terra, was doing what was ignorantly perceived as ‘it’ ‘directly’, and open uncontrolled widespread proliferation down to the unit level throughout the Military, with all levels of Command turning ‘Nelsons Eye’, even by rogue ‘cowboys’, not trained interrogators. And even with trained interrogators allowing/authorizing barbaric permissive practices beyond Law … for no useful purpose re actionable Intel … merely to terrorize. Let alone burying/burning any reports/evidence of, even if by inducted 3rd parties such as Iraqi SF/Police death squads …
You are respectfully conflating/confusing Tactical Questioning re immediate/real-time tactical value on the local battlefield with subsequent screening & processing for formal interrogations at a detention/interrogation center … ’24 hours’, all that shit, is propaganda myths seeking to obtain public acceptance/consent to, War Crimes authorized by the Executive.
Anyone with truly ‘critical’ intelligence knowledge, especially degradable time-sensitive critical, is usually trained or at least briefed/indoctrinated to conceal their personal value, disguise their rank/specialty, exaggerate their poor health/fatigue status, become the ‘greyman’ among the human mass to evade first level screening for priority selection, so that they will be overlooked or by the time they are selected and processed, ‘time critical’ knowledge is devalued/worthless. Non-time sensitive strategic intelligence collection is a whole ‘nother matter.
Regardless, when faced with sustained unendurable coercive interrogation/torture, psychological, yet especially physical maiming/death or threat/combination thereof, the subject will lie/fabricate to ‘escape’. Especially if the subject is an actual holder of sought Intel, Not divulge. After all, rationally, if subsequently caught out fabricating/deceiving, whats the worst that can happen given the subjects situ ?
It does NOT work re actual actionable intelligence collection. Obtaining false confessions (a crime) is not actionable intelligence collection, see Torture, Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada.
Peace.
@ Posted by: ToivoS | Apr 27, 2017 1:07:12 PM | 21
So, just like the Nazis & OUN re Op Paperclip (Ballistic/Cruise Missiles), the documented research conducted by the Nazis on living subjects in the concentration camps (High Altitude Research, etc), the Japanese War Criminals of Unit 731 and most ‘crucially’ their detailed documented research including on living beings, was approved at the highest levels of government, the Truman Presidency, in order to be immune to War Crimes prosecution ?
This was done at similar levels of National Security, State secrecy as the Manhattan project, as alternative complementary Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), tho somehow with an intention to never actually deploy ?!
Apart from the Chinese themselves, numerous allied Prisoners of War, including Americans, were among those maimed/killed/infected by Unit 731, ranging from being used as living ‘test dummies’ tied to dispersed ‘stakes’ for explosive ordnance tests to chemical & biological agents, and if they somehow survived, dissected in autopsies re the invaluable, documented ‘research’.
After all, we dropped two nuclear bombs, to ‘test them live’, where the first was at the most generous, barely justifiable, and the second unequivocally both a War Crime & a Crime against Humanity. And the only nation to have done so …
Given the above, which is all documented, including declassified docu, curious minds wonder why anyone would believe there was, therefore, no intention to ever deploy chemical/biological weapons. That its implausible given prior, concurrent and follow-on conduct ‘at war’ ?
After all, since it all happened (Nukes & Korea) under Harry Trumans/Douglas MacArthurs/Curtis Lemays watch, absolute paragons of humanity they are known to have been, they had the benefit at the time of plausible-deniablity given no mushroom cloud nor fallout/radiation effects, and as you posted, the effects would likely be undetectable by those not, ‘in the know’ ? Weapons need to be deployed to be properly assessed and evaluated re capabilities, do they not ? And Evil ChiComs & NorComs were considered at the time to be even less human than the preceding ratlike ‘Jap’, were they not ?
To this day we still know very little re Fort Detricks activities since WWII circa ’43 onwards …
Posted by: Outraged | Apr 27 2017 20:11 utc | 41
Further to the US unilateral & arbitrary demand, with ‘all options on the table‘, to ‘denuclearize’ the Korean peninsula … some issues routinely omitted and misrepresented in Western MSM:
China was a belligerent in the Korean War, as Nth Korean ally, and a participant and signatory to the Korean War Armistice Agreement, subsequently repeatedly re-affirmed by the UN General Assembly, and by the US & Chinese governments. The other parties were the US/UN Command & North Korea. The South Korean government did NOT participate, or sign or affirm or accept the Armistice.
Western MSM repeatedly stresses that the War never ended and NK & SK are still technically at War.
The crucial omission is that China and the US via the ‘US/UN Command’ are still also, ‘Technically’, ‘At War’.
Suggest advisable to carefully assess MSM reports re Chinas supposed position, intentions, interests, as there is continuous misrepresentation of very clear Chinese government statements re the Korean peninsula, and omissions. What China states is rarely reported in full or directly quoted by MSM. The same ongoing situation as for the Evil Russkies & Iran …
In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly adopted resolutions endorsing the desirability of replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace treaty and dissolving the United Nations Command (ie US/UN Command).
In October 1996, the U.N. Security Council, by a statement of the President of the Council, urged that the Armistice Agreement should be fully observed until replaced by a new peace mechanism. Approving nations included the United States and the Peoples Republic of China, two of the armistice’s signatories, effectively refuting any suggestion that the armistice was no longer in force.
Constantly omitted by western MSM are one of the crucial terms of the Armistice Agreement, as signed, bound and affirmed as above, and routine periodic breaches of it, going back six decades.
United States abrogation of paragraph 13(d), Korean War Armistice Agreement – Deployment of U.S. Nuclear weapons in Korea in 1958
Paragraph 13(d) of the Armistice Agreement (Full Text of the Korean War Armistice Agreement – July 27, 1953 (Findlaw)) mandated that neither side introduce new weapons into Korea, other than piece-for-piece replacement of equipment. In September 1956 the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Radford indicated that the U.S. military intention was to introduce atomic weapons into Korea, which was agreed to by the U.S. National Security Council and President Eisenhower. However paragraph 13(d) prevented the introduction of nuclear weapons and missiles. The U.S. unilaterally abrogated paragraph 13(d), breaking the Armistice Agreement, despite concerns by United Nations allies. At a meeting of the Military Armistice Commission on June 21, 1957, the U.S. informed the North Korean representatives that the United Nations Command no longer considered itself bound by paragraph 13(d) of the armistice. In January 1958 nuclear armed Honest John missiles and 280mm atomic cannons were deployed to South Korea, a year later adding nuclear armed Matador cruise missiles with the range to reach China and the then Soviet Union.
The U.S. believed that North Korea had introduced new weapons contrary to 13(d), but did not make specific allegations (Nor offered any evidence). North Korea also believed the U.S. had introduced new weapons earlier, citing Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission inspection team reports for August 1953 to April 1954.
North Korea denounced the abrogation of paragraph 13(d). North Korea responded militarily by digging massive underground fortifications resistant to nuclear attack, and forward deployment of its conventional forces so that the use of nuclear weapons against it would endanger South Korean and U.S. forces as well. In 1963 North Korea asked the Soviet Union and China for help in developing nuclear weapons, but was refused.
Following the abrogation of paragraph 13(d), the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) largely lost its function …
So, the nation that offered no evidence to justify the Armistice Breach, and thereby rendering null & void any neutral supervision of the Armistice Agreement, was the nation to actually Nuclearize the Korean peninsula almost 60 years ago, starting in 1958, and continued to do so by upgrading and further deployments ever since, including nuclear armed bombers, naval vessels & submarines within striking range or directly deployed in or to Korea. And now even THAAD, a direct nuclear pre-emptive first strike threat to NK, Russia & China. The same ‘Rogue’ nation openly threatens unilateral use of military force to coerce the other parties to the Armistice Agreement to disarm and ‘denuclearize’ under threats of pre-emptive military strikes, even War ?
Considering the historical record of the United States of committing and covering up warcrimes as well as its general belligerence, North Korea and other nations are probably well advised to stick to their nuclear and missile programs. – b
And just as for the Syrian ‘Sarin/Gas attacks’ blamed on the Assad Government SAA, its all based on, ‘Trust us’ & no verifiable evidence. Yup.
Posted by: Outraged | Apr 28 2017 18:34 utc | 91
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