A. F. Miller Quotes
We go out on a hike, catch a negro and ask him if he has a gun; he will give us a polite bow and say 'No sabby,' and then we take hold of him and give him the 'water cure,' after which he can get us two or three guns. Now, this is the way we give them the water cure: lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don't give up, pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I'll tell you it is a terrible torture.
American officers were court martialed for the torture and other atrocities. Waterboarding was then called the “water cure” and has always been illegal. After 9-11, the U.S. allowed the torture and referred to it as “enhanced interrogation.”
A. F. Miller, U. S. Army Soldier, Description of the Waterboarding Torture used by American soldiers in the Philippine War, Letter to The Omaha World, March 5, 1900
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
When TR came to office, the U. S. was in the midst of war with Philippine insurgents who were fighting an asymmetric , guerrilla war against the U. S. Army. The war had become very brutal with the insurgents using terror and atrocities and some Army units executing prisoners and torturing captives. Roosevelt, actually fired the General who was in charge of the field troops rather than just discipline lower level officers as usually has happened.
The Colonel defined people capable of bearing arms as males and females over 20 years of age. Many were slaughtered. Fortunately, most of his officers and men did not follow this order but enough did to make it one of the most disgraceful events in American military history. Smith was court marshaled and found guilty but his punishment was to be cashiered from the army. There were many atrocities committed by the minorities of both sides in this brutal war. Military and Congressional Investigations caused the army manual to be revised military policies reformed.
The Philippine-American War was terribly brutal. In response to insurgent atrocities against American soldiers, some of the Americans also adopted brutal tactics including torture and mutilation. Washington had heard stories of this improper behavior in the part of some American troops and instructed the senior officers to investigate and discipline the men if the reports were true. Unfortunately some of the senior officers covered up the illegal and criminal behavior of some Americans. This quotation was taken from a New York Times report on a representative of the Red Cross who went to the Philippines at the invitation of the insurgents. He generally found serious atrocities by some of the soldiers on both sides but by no means all of the combatants. General Otis, the U. S. Commander tried to keep Blake out, and had him detained away from the battle areas for some weeks where he was “educated” about the enemy atrocities. Finally Blake got to the field and reached the insurgent commander who had invited him. His report generally praised the American troops, but spared no details when there were guilty of atrocities.
Yet we continued to give the government aid.
The White Boers viewed themselves as superior to the Blacks and the Blacks and Whites competed for land. In an early form of ethnic cleansing, the Boers attacked the undefended women and children of the Black tribes. The authorities opposed these atrocities but did not have any way of enforcing their orders.
The Congresswoman was referring to the fact that the U. S. Defense Department had trained Indonesian military officers who had leadership roles in the massacres and other human rights violations in East Timor in 1999.
Abu Ghraib was the prison in Iraq where prisoners were brutalized and treated illegally and immorally. Seymour Hirsh was the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who broke the story. Levy contrasted that where the Algerian War was full of such atrocities but French intellectuals and press would not publicize it. It didn’t stop for the whole war.
The U.S. was at war with Spain and Filipino insurgents for the control of the Philippines. During this war there were a few senior U. S. Officers who in later times would have been tried and jailed for war crimes. The men under them were brutal and committed atrocities at their orders. See {615368}.
The George W. Bush administration had issued a memorandum to key Federal Agencies stating that certain types of torture were legal—a finding that was quickly repudiated after Bush and VP Cheney—who was a leading force for allowing torture of terrorism suspects—were out of office. But Bush had told the American People and the World that the United States will not torture any prisoners. The dilemma was “solved” when someone came up with this euphemism.
Clark’s men had English Colonel Hamilton under siege by making him think there were many more Americans in Clarks army than the real 180 or so. He tried to get Hamilton to surrender by threatening if they had to take the fort they would treat Hamilton and the British as murderers—Hamilton had paid hostile Indians for American scalps. At that point a party of Clark’s men arrived with 4 or 5 Indian prisoners who had been captured raiding
civilian farms. After the Indians were executed, Hamilton agreed to surrender.
The Tanguts were a major Chinese Buddhist culture and people with generations of history, emperors, books and religion. The Mongols had been fighting them for over 20 years. After his death, his army obeyed the order and not only murdered every Tangit they could in the capital city in Western Xia, but razed their buildings, burned their books, destroyed their tombs and artifacts. Tanguts who were in other parts of Western Xia were absorbed and assimilated into the Mongol culture. Even the Tangut language died out in a few generations. The Tanguts had been made to “vanish”.
