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RBHam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-27-05 11:08 PM
Original message
A Nuremberg Lesson
by Scott Horton, Scott Horton is a New York attorney and a lecturer in international humanitarian law at Columbia University.

"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed … were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees."



Most people who hear this quote today assume it was uttered by a senior officer of the Bush administration. Instead, it comes from one of history's greatest mass murderers, Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz. Such a confusion demonstrates the depth of the United States' moral dilemma in its treatment of detainees in the war on terror.

In past weeks, we have been treated to a show trial of sorts at Ft. Hood, Texas, starring Cpl. Charles Graner and other low-ranking military figures. The Graner court-martial and the upcoming trial of Pfc. Lynndie England are being hyped as proof of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's explanation for the Abu Ghraib prison tortures: A few "rotten apples" — not U.S. policy or those who created it — are to blame.

Graner entered a "Nuremberg defense" — arguing that he was acting on orders of his superiors. This defense was rejected in Ft. Hood as it was in Nuremberg 60 years ago, when Nazi war criminals were found guilty of crimes against humanity. A misled American public can choose to see in the Graner verdict the proof of the "rotten apples" theory and of the notion that Graner and the others acted on their own initiative. But what it should see is a larger Nuremberg lesson: Those who craft immoral policy deserve the harshest punishment.

more...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-horton20jan20,0,2436713.story
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-28-05 12:23 AM
Response to Original message
1. America doesn't invade countries during peace time.
NAZIs invade countries during peace time.

America 2004
Is
Germany 1930


Norman D. Livergood

We who live in the post-World War II period possess an immensely valuable symbol, even if we don't understand it or use it effectively: the example of Nazi Germany.

"The German experiment, except to those who are its victims, is particularly interesting, and, like the offer of a strong man to let himself be vivisected, should make a great contribution to political science. For the Germans are the most gifted and most highly educated people who ever devoted the full strength of a modern state to stopping the exchange of ideas; they are the most highly organized people who ever devoted all the coercive power of government to the abolition of their own intellectual life; they are the most learned people who ever pretended to believe that the premises and the conclusion of all inquiry may be fixed by political fiat."
Walter Lippmann. (1936), The Good Society
An Unknown Episode In American History


     Nazi Germany was created by the criminal cabal that currently rules the United States and much of the world. One of the early underlings of this cabal was Prescott Bulsh, Dubya's grandfather. Prescott Bush was a director of the Union Banking Corporation, which the U.S. government took over in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corporation stock shares, all of which were owned by E. Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush, three Nazi executives, and two other associates of Prescott Bush.

     President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number 248 seizing the property of Prescott Bush under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The order, published in obscure government record books and kept out of the news, explained nothing about the Nazis involved; only that the Union Banking Corporation was run for the Thyssen family of Germany and/or Hungary, nationals of a designated enemy country

     This act by the U.S. government made it clear that Prescott Bush and the other directors of the Union Banking Corporation were in essence front men for the Nazis. By keeping news of this seizure quiet, the American government avoided the more important issue: in what way were Hitler and his Nazi cohorts set up, armed, and supported by the New York and London cartel of which Prescott Bush was an executive manager?

     On Oct. 28, 1942, the U.S. government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on November 17, 1942. In this action, the government announced that it was seizing only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis' U.S. partners to carry on the business.

CONTINUED...

http://www.new-enlightenment.com/germany1930.htm
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-28-05 12:35 AM
Response to Original message
2. The German people trusted Hitler.
So, they, and the military, were willing to follow orders.
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Swamp Rat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-28-05 12:46 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. Don't you trust Bush?
:D

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-28-05 09:21 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. Isn't that TIME's Moron of the Year?
LMFAOATLSFM!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!

It's TRUE.
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Charon Donating Member (321 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-28-05 09:32 AM
Response to Reply #2
5. The American Peopk Trusted Roosevelt
and followed orders to lock up thousands of Americans because they were of Japanese ancestery.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-28-05 11:22 AM
Response to Reply #5
6. Jawohol. FBI should've locked up NAZI supporters like the Bushes.
Prescott Bush did Big Business, so did Allen Dulles and Averel Harriman with Hitler. And they went unpunished. THAT's the real crime.

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president


Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday September 25, 2004
The Guardian

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html

BTW: I agree with some of what you said. The internment of Japanese Americans was wrong and illegal. I don't think that Roosevelt was bad, per se, he only did what J Edgar Hoover and George C Marshall told him was necessary.
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