Waterboarding In Mississippi

A fascinating nugget from American history, unearthed by guest-blogger Shertaugh at the IsThatLegal? blog. Waterboarding was sometimes used in the Deep South to torture African-Americans and to extract false confessions to alleged crimes. And when it emerged in an appeal as long ago as 1926, even the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled it categorically "a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country," and "barbarous." They over-turned a guilty verdict for murder by an African-American man against a white man because such methods invalidated any notion of a reliable confession:

In a case called Fisher v. State, 110 So. 361, 362 (Miss. 1926), Mississippi’s highest court ordered the retrial of a convicted murderer because his confession was secured by a local sheriff’s use of the water cure.

Here’s the court:

The state offered . . . testimony of confessions made by the appellant, Fisher. . . [who], after the state had rested, introduced the sheriff, who testified that, he was sent for one night to come and receive a confession of the appellant in the jail; that he went there for that purpose; that when he reached the jail he found a number of parties in the jail; that they had the appellant down upon the floor, tied, and were administering the water cure, a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.

Fisher relied on a case called White v. State, 182, 91 So. 903, 904 (Miss. 1922), in which the court took — as I understand history in those parts — the unusual step of reversing the murder conviction of a young African-American male, charged with killing a white man (it appears), because his confession was secured by the cure. The court said:

[T]he hands of appellant were tied behind him, he was laid upon the floor upon his back, and, while some of the men stood upon his feet, Gilbert, a very heavy man, stood with one foot entirely upon appellant’s breast, and the other foot entirely upon his neck. While in that position what is described as the “water cure” was administered to him in an effort to extort a confession as to where the money was hidden which was supposed to have been taken from the dead man. The “water cure” appears to have consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession. Under these barbarous circumstances the appellant readily confessed…

In 2007, we have a US attorney-general who cannot say what a Mississippi high court was able to assume was common knowledge in 1926. That’s how far this president has dragged us down into barbarism. This is how cowardly today’s Congress is.

Turn-Around In Iraq? Ctd.

A reader notes:

Americans are an impatient people. Everything seems to be driven by short term goals. So if I were fighting the Americans in Iraq and the surge meant really high losses, I would just fade into the woodwork for a few months.  The whole world knows that come next March the US has to start pulling out of Iraq. So instead of fighting and dying, why not just sit back and let the Americans arm you and train you. There will be plenty of time to kill each other after America reduces it forces back to pre surge levels.

I have to say I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone can know what will happen. One thing I’ve learned is that Iraq is what it is. And our ability to change it is as illusory as all the other imperial attempts to change it. I tend to agree with Gertrude Bell who tried a similar quixotic venture in 1916:

We rushed into the business with our usual disregard for a comprehensive political scheme. We treated Mesop[otamia] as if it were an isolated unit, instead of which it is part of Arabia… When people talk of our muddling through it throws me into a passion. Muddle through! why yes, so we do—wading through blood and tears that need never have been shed.

Like Something From A Movie

Bannermanns_051505_230_bw

A stunning photo-display of what’s left of Bannerman’s Island:

As American Heritage describes it, "this island fortress was once the private arsenal of the world’s largest arms dealer." And that was Frank "Francis" Bannerman.

Bannerman, we learn, "bought up ninety per cent of all captured guns, ammunition, and other equipment auctioned off after the Spanish-American War. He also bought weapons directly from the Spanish government before it evacuated Cuba. These purchases vastly exceeded the firm’s capacity at its store in Manhattan and filled three huge Brooklyn warehouses with munitions, including thirty million cartridges." Accordingly, "Bannerman now needed an arsenal."

Or, more accurately speaking: he needed a private island.

Check out Shaun O’Boyle’s Bannerman’s gallery. And his entire Modern Ruins series.