Comment of the Day: : Liveblogging World War II: August 10, 1945: Post-Nagasaki:
Anami told the other cabinet ministers that, under torture, a captured American P-51 fighter pilot...
...had told his interrogators that the United States possessed 100 atom bombs and that Tokyo and Kyoto would be bombed 'in the next few days'. The pilot, Marcus McDilda, was lying. He knew nothing of the Manhattan Project and simply told his interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear to end the torture. The lie, which caused him to be classified as a high-priority prisoner, probably saved him from beheading.
So in other words, the nearest real-world case to the 'ticking time-bomb' scenario beloved by torture apologists.
And the information gained was exactly, precisely, wrong. So wrong that it led the torturers to do the opposite of what they would have done if they had discovered the truth.
More evidence that 'ticking time-bomb' stories are nothing more than torture-porn for torture-fetishists.
