Misleading I.

This is coolbert:

"Having converted spies means getting hold of the enemy's spies and using them for our own purpose, by means of heavy bribes and liberal promises, detaching them from the enemy's device and inducing them to carry back false information as well as to spy in turn on their own countrymen."

"They cannot be properly managed without benevolence"

"the enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away, and comfortably house."

[all the above attributed to Sun Tzu, from 2500 years ago!!]

Here with a misleading [at least to the uninitiated] article written only this month by the distinguished British pundit, Christopher Hitchens:

"Ruthless yet Humane"

"Why Obama cited Churchill on torture."

"[Churchill] told his audience that, even at a time when London was being 'bombed to smithereens' and the British government held hundreds of Nazi agents in an internment center, there was a prime-ministerial view that torture was never permissible."

Hitchens, describing the British internment and treatment of captured German agents during WW2, housed in:

"Latchmere House, an extraordinary British prison . . . which housed as many as 400 of Hitler's operatives during World War II . . . ' Violence is taboo, for not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information.'"

"Espionage agents were not protected by the Geneva Conventions, and the existence of the camp did not even have to be reported to the Red Cross . . . But by the same token, espionage agents were not usually responsible for 'ticking bomb' scenarios."

Hitchens is trying here to make a historical analogy? German "agents" captured during WW2 by the British were treated in a humane, just, and benevolent manner. In contrast to the alleged rough maltreatment of terrorists as "housed" at Gitmo?

This analogy is misleading? The context is most important? A context the average reader would normally not appreciate. In the British case, those "agents" were captured German spies. Treated in a just, humane and "benevolent" manner, with the intention of recruitment to the British DOUBLE-CROSS SYSTEM!!

Captured German spies, under A THREAT OF EXECUTION, "persuaded" to work for the British and feed deceptive information to the German spymaster. Spies, "converted", to use the term as favored by Sun Tzu, while not being "maltreated", were under a threat of death. A threat that in a number of cases was carried out!! WHEN THE BRITISH FELT THEY NEEDED TO BE ROUGH, THEY WERE ROUGH!!

"German spies captured in the British Isles were given a choice between execution and becoming a double agent."

Comment:

* "espionage agents were not usually responsible for 'ticking bomb' scenarios" NOT ONLY "not usually responsible", but that "'ticking bomb' scenarios" WOULD NOT HAVE ENTAILED THE POSSIBLE USE OF AN ATOMIC WEAPON OR OTHER WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!

Fool President Obama, but not fooling Bert!!

coolbert.