BENIGN WATERBOARDING

Although, recently, Dick Cheney has been making the rounds of TV talk shows, touting waterboarding as some sort of benign process, similar to a nasal lavage that one would receive at a friendly ENT clinic, the fact is that, during the Truman Administration, Japanese soldiers, who waterboarded our troops, were prosecuted for war crimes.  It is interesting to speculate on how the Bush/Cheney Administration, had been in power in 1947, would have acted.  Would they, instead of prosecuting those Japanese soldiers, have given them some sort of humanitarian award, for being thoughtful enough to provide such good care for the sinuses of our GI.s?  I wonder if they would be in favor of providing some sort of reparations to those Japanese soldiers, or their survivors, for having been wrongfully prosecuted for a non offense.