Reply #10: My impression about torture in World War II ...

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Is that it was practiced in an ad hoc way on the battlefield, but not in any systematic Guantanemo-style manner in the prison camps.

That is, if soldiers captured an enemy in the course of combat, they might well hook him up to the field telephone to try to find out more about the numbers and locations of the troops they were fighting. But once that enemy soldier was taken back to headquarters, he was under the protection of the Geneva Convention.

There was certainly enough free-form brutality going on to cast a certain pall over the American victory in World War II. The awareness of it was part of what made the film noir of the late 40's quite as noir as it was. But it was nothing like what is happening now.