Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And now for a few of your letters. Last week, I reported on how news outlets define the practice called waterboarding. Frequently they call it "simulated drowning." Tim McDonough of Brooklyn, New York believes a better term would be "near drowning," which he says is used by the medical profession when a person is saved from drowning or resuscitated.
Oliver from Davis, California, suggests "controlled drowning." Other listeners asserted the word "torture" should be applied.
BOB GARFIELD:
Bob R. from Connecticut wrote in to take issue with Brooke's statement that the Japanese soldier Yukio Asano was sentenced in 1947 to 15 years’ hard labor for waterboarding. The U.S. did not sentence him, quote, "just for waterboarding," writes Bob. "He did far worse things. Among the charges - beating, using hands, fists, clubs, kicking, water torture, burning using cigarettes, strapping on a stretcher head downward, and stealing Red Cross packages and supplies intended for prisoners of war."
Bob continued, quote, "There seems to have been no one prosecuted for waterboarding, alone. Prove me wrong, On the Media."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
On our interview about how differently history is recorded in the high school textbooks of different nations, Dominic Arbolay of New York City wrote in with this. Quote, "I took a trip through the Philippines last year and stopped at a war memorial. It commemorated the Filipinos who died in World War II and a war I had never heard of, the Philippine-American War. My old high school textbook referred to it as an insurgence, devoting just one sentence to the conflict."
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BOB GARFIELD:
Thanks for your comments and clarifications. Keep them coming to onthemedia@wnyc.org, or post them on our website at onthemedia.org, and please don't forget to say where you live and how to pronounce your name.
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