Remind you of Hillary, just a little bit?
It seems as if a lot of Democrats think so:
Al Gore Leads Top Democratic Candidates in "Blind Bio" Poll
Submitted by Julie on November 2, 2007 - 7:50pm. Elections 2008 News Politics U.S. Politics
Zogby International recently conducted a "blind bio" telephone poll which revealed that former Vice President Al Gore is currently favored over leading Democratic candidates by likely Democratic Party voters across the nation.
In a "blind bio" poll, candidates names are not used. Instead, their names are replaced with a brief description of their biographies.
The poll showed that when likely Democratic voters were given descriptions of the top three Democratic candidates - Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, along with the biography of Al Gore, Gore won with 35% support. Clinton captured 24%, Obama snagged 22%, and Edwards trailed far behind with just 10% support. Gore's bio was the top choice for both men (39%) and women (31%)m and was most favored by younger voters.
Self-described liberal Democrats strongly favored Al Gore's bio (43%), over those of Clinton (21%), Edwards (17%), and Obama (12%). Moderate Democratic voters, who are believe to most closely represent the choices of likely Democratic voters overall, also showed the greatest preference for Gore's bio at 36%.
The poll was commissioned by AlGore.org, an organization dedicated to getting Al Gore to run for the presidency, and was conducted from October 24-27, 2007. It included 527 likely Democratic voters nationwide, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points.
For those more youthful than moi, The photo is of Nurse Mildred Ratched a fictional character from Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. She was portrayed by Louise Fletcher in the 1975 film of the same name. the film, starring Jack Nicholson, created more homeless people in American cities than Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the Smarter.
ReplyDeleteNurse Ratched
ReplyDeleteIt was a powerful piece of filmmaking.
ReplyDeleteOnly saw it once, that was enough, for me.
It would be something to see, AlGore ride to the Democrats rescue. I still think he is their strongest candidate, but he does not have the machine.
The more that is deen of Ms Clinton, the higher her negatives will rise.
Hating Rudy
ReplyDeleteThe segment revealed, just as with Bush, the media has no problem broadcasting factual errors when targeting Giuliani. Olbermann misquoted Giuliani as saying that Democrats wanted to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House. In actuality, Giuliani didn't say Osama, he said Assad, as in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of the leaders whom Barack Obama did in fact say he would be willing to meet with in Washington with no preconditions within the first year of his administration. Making the incident even more absurd, Olbermann ran the video clip of Giuliani's remarks on his show, and it was clear that Giuliani said Assad. How clear? The transcript appearing on the official MSNBC website for Olbermann's show had Giuliani saying Assad in the video clip.
Nevertheless, Olbermann asked his guest Arianna Huffington to comment on whether the former mayor was being hyperbolic or lying.
"Well, he's lying and also every day he reveals more and more of himself," Huffington said. "And you can see that he really has the soul of a thug and the disposition of a tyrant."
Huffington repeated the false Giuliani-Osama quote, and later in the interview, she added: "He's kind of channeling Rush Limbaugh. He's making the lunatic fringe mainstream."
And Olbermann wondered, "Has it reached a level yet where we should be considering examining whether or not this is compulsive lying that there is something endemic to [Giuliani]? Or this specific purpose driven lies?"
One might ask the same about Olbermann.
The Giuliani hate fest has also infiltrated the airwaves, where Keith Olbermann has made bashing Rudy a daily feature on his show. On Monday, an Olbermann segment entitled, "Rudy Giuliani -- The next Dick Cheney?" was about Giuliani's penchant for "secrecy" and "proclivity for executive power..."
ReplyDeleteThis was followed up on Tuesday with a segment that began with a graphic featuring Giuliani, Bush in the background, and the words "Bush on Steroids" -- a reference to John Edwards's comment that Giuliani shares Bush's love of "crony capitalism."
Dispatches, Michael Yon.
ReplyDeleteIraqi Islamic Party says, "Al Qaeda is Defeated." - Nov 1, 2007
Kesey, Stanford Grad, brilliant writer, raised near-illiterate kids from all appearances, the one time I visited their website.
ReplyDelete...sad, embarassing, even.
Tune in, Drop Out!
Since August, aQ Iraq was not General O's primary concern, doug.
ReplyDeleteMid-August he said that. In NYCity, to Ralph Peters and the rest of the staff.
The next report is in March, the foretold Victory Parade is building up it's mo', lookin' for some jo'. Laying the groundwork of credibility. It's why HealthCare is becoming the issue de jur fro Hillary.
Times of London, today.
Mr Murdock knows the real deal
They're calling it The Petraeus Curve
Dog the Bounty Hunter, set himself up for a fall, aye?
It's Aloha Akbar for him.
Mark Steyn reprints an article from August
What about sanctuary for us, from them?
It dovetails to yesterday's discusion.
State's Rights and the new Federalism.
Expanding power where the Federals have no Authority, while abdicating the Responsibilities they already have.
"Nurse Mildred Ratched is the head administrative nurse at the Salem, Oregon State (Mental) Hospital, where she exercises near-absolute power over the patients' access to medications, privileges, and basic necessities such as food and toiletries.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the US health care system after Jan 20, 2009.
Kesey It's a miracle the guy could write anything. I liked 'Sometimes A Great Notion' better, for the scenery. There's(in the movie) a beautiful stretch of river and country and they come round a bend--all clear cut. This is so long ago I can't remember the plot well, but I remember the logger trying to cut the other fellow out from under a log, where he got trapped under water, with a chain saw, which went dead of course from the wet.
ReplyDeleteKesey wrote a great article about the Pendleton Roundup. Kind of a comment on how race relations might have gone. One red, one black, one white--should have gotten equal prizes, but didn't.
One Flew Over--tough to watch all right.
The Big Chief is free.
Good one, Ms. T :)) Or the Canadian one now. Maybe Soviet psychiatry. Or North Korean. Hillary will ratchet it up.
ReplyDeleteRoth, or is it Rothman, one of the sane ones, at KGO, very bright and knows the mid east, being a Jew, was saying things are bad in Pakistan. Taliban has about half the country. Opinion was Benazir probably won't last long.
ReplyDeleteDamn were they all pissed at Feinstein. Condoning torture.
Omen in the Sky, folks
ReplyDeleteKings fall, old chaos breaks out again, or divine children are born.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting piece about Iraq, and attempts by US Army officers to extracate Iraqis from Iraq, sending them to the US, for their safety.
ReplyDeleteThe Disgrace at State
Last January, I spent twenty-four hours in Baghdad with Lieutenant Colonel Steven Miska, an extremely capable deputy brigade commander, who introduced me to some of the Iraqi interpreters on his base. In March, when my article “Betrayed” appeared, Miska wrote me to say that he was going to commit himself to getting his unit’s local staff who were under threat out of Iraq and into the U.S. Now Miska is at the end of his fifteen-month tour and about to leave Iraq. Last night, he wrote in an e-mail:
We have five Iraqis in the US, all interpreters. We have more than two dozen more with packets in various stages of completion. Even though this is the special [immigrant] visa streamlined process, I don’t think the Iraqis could have figured it out without my staff. It took a concerted effort to decipher the system and develop the points of contact at each echelon to work through the red tape. We have had more success than most. Still, the policy calls for the final visa approval to take place in Amman. Iraqis must come up with an alibi to get to Amman, as “I’m going to the U.S. Embassy” will get you quickly turned around at the Jordanian border.We set up a bit of an underground railroad from our location and it has worked.
...
Stripping the Iraqi Government and the US Army deployed, following the tour of Lieutenant Colonel Steven Miska in Iraq, of vital assets in the War on Terror.
The LtCol should be disiplined, for helping those Iraq to desert their country and duty. In the name of personal safety.
Some false sense of personal loyalty, that degrades future US capability in the Region. Taking those useful and trained Iraqi out of the mix, for the future US combatants.
Misappropriation of assets, setting up an "underground railroad" for cowards and deserters.
It is such a story, the writer not even seeing the real spin.
He denounces the State Department, for not expediting the migration.
Nurse Ratched Cruising for Bruising
ReplyDeleteHILLARY CLINTON CAN BE STOPPED IN IOWA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FoxNews.com on November 1, 2007.
Printer-Friendly Version
The presidential race is now entering its most dangerous period for the front-runners in each party — Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. With each boasting consistent and formidable leads in most na tional polling, the leading candidate in each party must now prove his and her mettle by winning in a small state among a relative handful of voters.
And Iowa can be a funny place. When a presidential campaign, funded and staffed on a national scale, crams itself into a tiny state, the resulting overkill makes the outcome hard to predict. Even candidates whose resources could not yet begin to cover the entire country — Huckabee for example — can effectively blanket Iowa.
So far, the trends in Iowa are not good for either front-runner. Hillary holds only the narrowest of leads over Obama — less than two points in the recent Iowa Straw Poll — a survey which also found Rudy running a disastrous fourth on the Republican side of the ledger.
Hillary’s vulnerability is especially interesting now that the Democrats running against her seem determined to take off their gloves and go after the front runner. The Marquis of Queensbury rules that have restrained them seem to have fallen by the wayside and a tag team of Obama, Edwards, and Dodd appears ready to deconstruct her bit by bit.
By himself, it is clear that Obama lacks the starch to go after Hillary. In Tuesday night’s debate, Tim Russert set up an opportunity for the Illinois Senator with his first question, probing why he felt she was lacking in candor. Instead of charging into the fray, as Russert’s question invited, he began by denigrating the media hype about his remarks.
If Obama played T-ball, he’d bunt!
But John Edwards seems to have a bracing effect on the reluctant dragon from Illinois. His trial lawyer style, eviscerating Hillary while smiling all the time, appears to be making headway. Between them, with a bit of Chris Dodd thrown in, Hillary was team-tackled on Tuesday night.
However, it is Hillary herself who creates her own vulnerability. With linguistic obfuscation reminiscent of Bill’s more famous remarks — “I didn’t inhale” and “It depends on what the definition of is, is” — Senator Clinton is determined not to tell us where she stands on anything.
Instead, she has come to believe, probably correctly, that if we knew what she really wants to do as president, we would never vote for her. So on Social Security (where she plans to raise taxes), Iran (where she will take military action if need be), Iraq (where she will keep the troops), the Alternative Minimum Tax (which she will only repeal if it can be used to hide massive tax increases) and drivers licenses (which she will give to illegals as soon as she can), Hillary resists telling the truth. And, under the scrutiny of opponents like Edwards and Dodd, and the questioning of Tim Russert, it is becoming obvious even to demented Democrats.
So can Hillary be beaten in Iowa? It all depends on whether, in this era of daily polling, her opponents can coalesce around whoever is in second place. Hillary won’t win a majority in Iowa, but, if Edwards and Obama continue to split the anti-Hillary vote, she will win a plurality. Such a victory will let her get out of Des Moines alive and will pave the way for truly dominating victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan — then Florida and the rest of the nation will fall in line.
But if Edwards defers to Obama — or, more likely, his voters realize that they must back Bar ack in order to stop Hillary — a viable alternative to the New York senator could emerge. If Obama beats Hillary, even by the narrowest of margins, her entire sense of inevitability will vaporize and she could be defeated as the primary cycle continues.
The key is that Edwards, Obama and Dodd must devote their resources to relentless negative advertising and media attacks against Hillary and need to band together in the remaining debates to expose her falsifications of her positions. (Richardson, auditioning for vice president, and Biden, indulging his mid-life crisis, won’t do it.) But if the trio of her vigorous opponents, do their work, maybe, just maybe, she can be stopped.
xxxxxxxxxx
KGO's Rothman was saying, too, that things aren't as good as advertised, in Iraq, not nearly.
Nurse Rancid Ratched.
ReplyDelete"Emotions finally boiled over after the killing of an Italian woman, who was raped, beaten to death and tossed into a ditch. Under public pressure the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, ironically a former EU president, has passed a decree allowing the deportation of any immigrant who poses a threat. This apparently runs afoul of EU Mandates, which forbid such expulsions for anything other than extraordinary cases."
ReplyDelete---
GWB would give them in-state tuition:
THAT'll Teach'em!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I put most of my new comments here. duh
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteShe is comin up for air, in a hostile enviorment.
ReplyDeleteNew Detainee Rights Weighed in Plans to Close Guantánamo
ReplyDeleteOfficials say they are considering granting Guantánamo detainees substantially greater rights as part of an effort to close the facility and possibly move much of its population to the United States.
---
As Pakistan becomes less constitutional, we become less sane.
Desert Shark!
ReplyDeleteGood thing Junior got out before being required to Mirandize everyone he came in contact with, from kids to IED placers.
ReplyDeletePut Mushie in Gitmo,
ReplyDeleteinstall Condi as
Supreme Leader and
Pianist in Chief.
If Mr. Bush’s nominee, Michael B. Mukasey, is approved as attorney general, he has signaled he might shift the course of the department. In testimony at his confirmation hearings he said he would seek ideas “with the goal of closing it down because it’s hurting us,” and said Guantánamo had “given us a black eye.”
ReplyDeleteBut he added that there was “no easy solution” to the question of what to do with current detainees.
---
Maybe there's no solution whatsoever to fighting long wars with both hands tied behind our back.
Bush managed to transform himself from Cowboy to New Age Globalist Functionary in 5 years.
She said the proposal to provide lawyers to detainees for their detention hearings and have their cases heard by judges would need to be clearly limited to detainees held inside the United States. Military officials said this summer that they were holding 24,500 detainees in Iraq alone.
ReplyDelete“How would we provide 25,000 lawyers in Iraq?” Ms. Hodgkinson said. “We couldn’t do it if we tried.”
---
What the Hell, why not try?
Sometimes those closest are the last to know!
ReplyDeleteI just found out about Dawg.
Wondered why 'Rat or whoever posted something the other day.
I gotta quit spending so much time with Sonia and get serious!
Yeah, doug, not a good time to be a bounty hunter on television.
ReplyDeleteLet alone in real life.
j'attendrai stolen from dhimmiwatch, wonder what the words mean?
ReplyDeleteTeresita...enjoy this from the Times of London.
ReplyDeleteAlive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood
By NIGEL BLUNDELL - More by this author »
Last updated at 17:53pm on 3rd November 2007
Comments
The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.
Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine.
According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention.
Crewmen on the submarine I-8, where Allied prisoners were slaughtered
"Many of the Japanese sailors who committed such terrible deeds are still alive today," he said.
"No one and nothing has bothered these men in six decades. There is only one documented case of a German U-boat skipper being responsible for cold-blooded murder of survivors. In the Japanese Imperial Navy, it was official orders."
Felton has compiled a chilling list of atrocities. He said: "The Japanese Navy sank Allied merchant and Red Cross vessels, then murdered survivors floating in the sea or in lifeboats.
"Allied air crew were rescued from the ocean and then tortured to death on the decks of ships.
"Naval landing parties rounded up civilians then raped and massacred them. Some were taken out to sea and fed to sharks. Others were killed by sledge-hammer, bayonet, beheading, hanging, drowning, burying alive, burning or crucifixion.
"I also unearthed details of medical experiments by naval doctors, with prisoners being dissected while still alive."
Felton's research reveals for the first time the full extent of the war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, a force that traditionally modelled itself on the Royal Navy. Previously unknown documents suggest that at least 12,500 British sailors and a further 7,500 Australians were butchered.
Felton cites the case of the British merchantman Behar, sunk by the heavy cruiser Tone on March 9, 1944. The Tone's captain Haruo Mayuzumi picked up survivors and, after ten days of captivity below decks, had 85 of them assembled, hands bound, on his ship's stern.
Scroll down for more...
Target: the merchant ship Behar. Its surviving crew were beheaded with swords
Kicked in their stomachs and testicles by the Japanese, they were then, one by one, beheaded with swords and their bodies dumped overboard.
A solitary senior officer, Commander Junsuke Mii, risked his career by dissenting. But he gave evidence at a subsequent war crimes tribunal only under duress. Meanwhile, most of the officers who conducted the execution remained at liberty after the war.
Felton also tells the horrifying story of James Blears, a 21-year-old radio operator and one of several Britons on the Dutch-registered merchant ship Tjisalak, which was torpedoed by the submarine I-8 on March 26, 1944, while sailing from Melbourne to Ceylon with 103 passengers and crew.
Fished from the sea or ordered out of lifeboats, Blears and his fellow survivors were assembled on the sub's foredeck.
From the conning tower, Commander Shinji Uchino issued the ominous order: "Do not look back because that will be too bad for you," Blears recalled.
One by one, the prisoners were shot, decapitated with swords or simply bludgeoned with a sledge-hammer and thrown on to the churning propellers.
Scroll down for more...
Atrocity: The Japanese executing prisoners
According to Blears: "One guy, they cut off his head halfway and let him flop around on the deck. The others I saw, they just lopped them off with one slice and threw them overboard. The Japanese were laughing and one even filmed the whole thing with a cine camera."
Blears waited for his turn, then pulled his hands out of his bindings and dived overboard amid machine-gun fire.
He swam for hours until he found a lifeboat, in which he was joined by two other officers and later an Indian crewman who had escaped alone after 22 of his fellow countrymen had been tied to a rope behind the I-8 and dragged to their deaths as it dived underwater.
Uchino, who was hailed a Japanese hero, ended the war in a senior land-based role and was never brought to trial.
Felton said: "This kind of behaviour was encouraged under a navy order dated March 20, 1943, which read, 'Do not stop at the sinking of enemy ships and cargoes. At the same time carry out the complete destruction of the crews'."
In the months after that order, the submarine I-37 sank four British merchant ships and one armed vessel and, in every case, the survivors were machine-gunned in the sea.
The submarine's commander was sentenced to eight years in prison at a war crimes trial, but was freed three years later when the Japanese government ruled his actions to have been "legal acts of war".
Felton said: "Most disturbing is the Japanese amnesia about their war record and senior politicians' outrageous statements about the war and their rewriting of history.
"The Japanese murdered 30million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23million of these were ethnic Chinese.
"It's a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning."
The geographical breadth of the navy's crimes, the heinous nature of the acts themselves and the sadistic behaviour of the officers and men concerned are almost unimaginable.
For example, the execution of 312 Australian and Dutch defenders of the Laha Airfield, Java, was ordered by Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama on February 24 and 25, 1942.
The facts were squeezed out of two Japanese witnesses by Australian army interrogators as there were no Allied survivors.
One of the Japanese sailors described how the first prisoner to be killed, an Australian, was led forward to the edge of a pit, forced to his knees and beheaded with a samurai sword by a Warrant Officer Sasaki, prompting a great cry of admiration from the watching Japanese.
Sasaki dispatched four more prisoners, and then the ordinary sailors came forward one by one to commit murder.
They laughed and joked with each other even when the executions were terribly botched, the victims pushed into the pit with their heads half attached, jerking feebly and moaning.
Hatakeyama was arraigned by the Australians, but died before his trial could begin. Four senior officers were hanged, but a lack of Allied witnesses made prosecuting others very difficult.
Felton said that the Americans were the most assiduous of the Allied powers in collecting evidence of crimes against their servicemen, including those of Surgeon Commander Chisato Ueno and eight staff who were tried and hanged for dissecting an American prisoner while he was alive in the Philippines in 1945.
However, the British authorities lacked the staff, money and resources of the Americans, and the British Labour government was not fully committed to pursuing Japanese war criminals into the Fifties.
• Slaughter At Sea: The Story Of Japan's Naval War Crimes by Mark Felton is published by Pen & Sword on November 20 at £19.99.
Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood
By NIGEL BLUNDELL - More by this author »
Last updated at 17:53pm on 3rd November 2007
Comments
The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.
Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine.
According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention.
Crewmen on the submarine I-8, where Allied prisoners were slaughtered
"Many of the Japanese sailors who committed such terrible deeds are still alive today," he said.
"No one and nothing has bothered these men in six decades. There is only one documented case of a German U-boat skipper being responsible for cold-blooded murder of survivors. In the Japanese Imperial Navy, it was official orders."
Felton has compiled a chilling list of atrocities. He said: "The Japanese Navy sank Allied merchant and Red Cross vessels, then murdered survivors floating in the sea or in lifeboats.
"Allied air crew were rescued from the ocean and then tortured to death on the decks of ships.
"Naval landing parties rounded up civilians then raped and massacred them. Some were taken out to sea and fed to sharks. Others were killed by sledge-hammer, bayonet, beheading, hanging, drowning, burying alive, burning or crucifixion.
"I also unearthed details of medical experiments by naval doctors, with prisoners being dissected while still alive."
Felton's research reveals for the first time the full extent of the war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, a force that traditionally modelled itself on the Royal Navy. Previously unknown documents suggest that at least 12,500 British sailors and a further 7,500 Australians were butchered.
Felton cites the case of the British merchantman Behar, sunk by the heavy cruiser Tone on March 9, 1944. The Tone's captain Haruo Mayuzumi picked up survivors and, after ten days of captivity below decks, had 85 of them assembled, hands bound, on his ship's stern.
Scroll down for more...
Target: the merchant ship Behar. Its surviving crew were beheaded with swords
Kicked in their stomachs and testicles by the Japanese, they were then, one by one, beheaded with swords and their bodies dumped overboard.
A solitary senior officer, Commander Junsuke Mii, risked his career by dissenting. But he gave evidence at a subsequent war crimes tribunal only under duress. Meanwhile, most of the officers who conducted the execution remained at liberty after the war.
Felton also tells the horrifying story of James Blears, a 21-year-old radio operator and one of several Britons on the Dutch-registered merchant ship Tjisalak, which was torpedoed by the submarine I-8 on March 26, 1944, while sailing from Melbourne to Ceylon with 103 passengers and crew.
Fished from the sea or ordered out of lifeboats, Blears and his fellow survivors were assembled on the sub's foredeck.
From the conning tower, Commander Shinji Uchino issued the ominous order: "Do not look back because that will be too bad for you," Blears recalled.
One by one, the prisoners were shot, decapitated with swords or simply bludgeoned with a sledge-hammer and thrown on to the churning propellers.
Scroll down for more...
Atrocity: The Japanese executing prisoners
According to Blears: "One guy, they cut off his head halfway and let him flop around on the deck. The others I saw, they just lopped them off with one slice and threw them overboard. The Japanese were laughing and one even filmed the whole thing with a cine camera."
Blears waited for his turn, then pulled his hands out of his bindings and dived overboard amid machine-gun fire.
He swam for hours until he found a lifeboat, in which he was joined by two other officers and later an Indian crewman who had escaped alone after 22 of his fellow countrymen had been tied to a rope behind the I-8 and dragged to their deaths as it dived underwater.
Uchino, who was hailed a Japanese hero, ended the war in a senior land-based role and was never brought to trial.
Felton said: "This kind of behaviour was encouraged under a navy order dated March 20, 1943, which read, 'Do not stop at the sinking of enemy ships and cargoes. At the same time carry out the complete destruction of the crews'."
In the months after that order, the submarine I-37 sank four British merchant ships and one armed vessel and, in every case, the survivors were machine-gunned in the sea.
The submarine's commander was sentenced to eight years in prison at a war crimes trial, but was freed three years later when the Japanese government ruled his actions to have been "legal acts of war".
Felton said: "Most disturbing is the Japanese amnesia about their war record and senior politicians' outrageous statements about the war and their rewriting of history.
"The Japanese murdered 30million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23million of these were ethnic Chinese.
"It's a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning."
The geographical breadth of the navy's crimes, the heinous nature of the acts themselves and the sadistic behaviour of the officers and men concerned are almost unimaginable.
For example, the execution of 312 Australian and Dutch defenders of the Laha Airfield, Java, was ordered by Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama on February 24 and 25, 1942.
The facts were squeezed out of two Japanese witnesses by Australian army interrogators as there were no Allied survivors.
One of the Japanese sailors described how the first prisoner to be killed, an Australian, was led forward to the edge of a pit, forced to his knees and beheaded with a samurai sword by a Warrant Officer Sasaki, prompting a great cry of admiration from the watching Japanese.
Sasaki dispatched four more prisoners, and then the ordinary sailors came forward one by one to commit murder.
They laughed and joked with each other even when the executions were terribly botched, the victims pushed into the pit with their heads half attached, jerking feebly and moaning.
Hatakeyama was arraigned by the Australians, but died before his trial could begin. Four senior officers were hanged, but a lack of Allied witnesses made prosecuting others very difficult.
Felton said that the Americans were the most assiduous of the Allied powers in collecting evidence of crimes against their servicemen, including those of Surgeon Commander Chisato Ueno and eight staff who were tried and hanged for dissecting an American prisoner while he was alive in the Philippines in 1945.
However, the British authorities lacked the staff, money and resources of the Americans, and the British Labour government was not fully committed to pursuing Japanese war criminals into the Fifties.
• Slaughter At Sea: The Story Of Japan's Naval War Crimes by Mark Felton is published by Pen & Sword on November 20 at £19.99.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=491548&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=
For Habu--CIA/UFO
ReplyDeleteThe crowd at Coast-to-CoastAM is abuzz--any insights? ;)
Habu: Here are a couple of short video clips of Laguna Seca.
ReplyDeleteHadn't ever seen the track from inside the car - even tho he's driving a Honda s 2000, things still move pretty quickly, tricky course.
In a McClaren would be mind-blowing!
Laguna Seca Video
A mind is a terrible thing to waste, AlBob, even a Scandanavian Muslim's!
ReplyDeletehabu and Pelosi
ReplyDeleteMore concerned with the long dead than with living.
Both are correct in their historical perspective.
But why be all that concerned, are the mussulmen ascendent in Japan?