Doctors Without Morals

[babylonsister]

Report Calls CIA Detainee Treatment 'Inhuman'

By Joby Warrick and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 7, 2009; Page A06


Medical officers who oversaw interrogations of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a confidential report that labeled the CIA program "inhuman."

Health personnel offered supervision and even assistance as suspected al-Qaeda operatives were beaten, deprived of food, exposed to temperature extremes and subjected to waterboarding, the relief agency said in the 2007 report, a copy of which was posted on a magazine Web site yesterday. The report quoted one medical official as telling a detainee: "I look after your body only because we need you for information."

New details about alleged CIA interrogation practices were contained in the 43-page volume written by ICRC officials who were given unprecedented access to the CIA's "high-value detainees" in late 2006. While excerpts of the report were leaked previously, the entire document was made public for the first time by author Mark Danner, a journalism professor, on the Web site of the New York Review of Books.

The confidential report sheds additional light on the CIA's handling of the detainees, who were held in secret overseas prisons for up to four years and subjected to what the agency describes as "enhanced interrogation techniques." In addition to widely reported methods such as waterboarding, the report alleges that several of the detainees were forced to stand for days in painful positions with their arms shackled overhead. One prisoner reported being shackled in this manner for "two to three months, seven days of prolonged stress standing followed by two days of being able to sit or lie down."

In addition to the coercive methods -- which the ICRC said "amounted to torture" and a violation of U.S. and international treaty obligations -- the report said detainees were routinely threatened with further violence against themselves and their families. Nine of the 14 prisoners said they were threatened with "electric shocks, infection with HIV, sodomy of the detainee and . . . being brought close to death," it said.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603654.html?hpid=topnews

[PDJane]

1. And this is going to make it difficult

for the US to ever again complain about torture or ill-treatment of American personnel.

It's time to dismantle the empire, and to pay restitutions.

[babylonsister]

4. Nah, we usually ignore what we've done. Seems there's a huge

double standard, or used to be.

[sarge43]

2. Fundamentally, those creatures are no different than Mengele. n/t

[Mari333]

3. Dr Mengele, take 2 ...nt

[Hubert Flottz]

8. Reading the OP reminded me of this book I once or twice read.

THE NAZI DOCTORS

Dr Robert Jay Lifton

http://www.holocaust-history.org/lifton/contents.shtml

[OhioChick]

5. K&R

:kick:

[OhioChick]

6. oops...double post

:)

[OregonBlue]

7. So who's gonna go after the medical personnel that participated? I hope they have their

licenses pulled FOREVER and they end up in jail and made to stand for days in painful positions with their arms shackled overhead!!!!

[acmavm]

9. Nah! Hit 'em where it'll REALLY hurt 'em. Make 'em do community service

for the next 20 years. Make them work for just what it takes to keep their asses alive and kicking.

[Echo In Light]

10. But...but...conspiracies don't exist!

K&R

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. "Just following orders" redux.

[arcadian]

12. This country is fucked. eom