(0 comments)The International Committee for the Red Cross (the organization empowered by international law to investigate claims of prisoner abuse) released the second part of its report on the treatment of detainees by the United States.
As before, the results are damning, and this time directly implicate medical officers who participated in the torture:
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.”
Read the WaPo article on the report or view the whole report here (note: it’s a PDF).
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DOWN THE VINE
Syndication
B-b-b-ut… "[..] the report finds that they did nothing wrong. Well, actually the Red Cross report calls their actions a "gross breach of medical ethics." But if you read the given examples, that conclusion appears pretty illogical, and based on nothing more than general opposition to torture." —Unreligious Right
You see? Nothing of substance here, the Red Cross is just being illogical with its "general opposition to torture". That Hippocratic Oath is soooo 4th century BC.
wow. you must have a stomach of steel to be able to so routinely wade into the depths of that guy's fantasies, delusions and denial.
the situation is actually quite simple when you break it down. imagine iran capturing some of our soldiers and doing to them what we did to our War on Terror prisoners. now imagine the unrestrained apoplexy that would be unleashed at the National Review (and the Unreligious Right) when they found out about it and discovered that the highest level of iran's government approved of waterboarding our brave soldiers, or depriving them of sleep to the point where they were literally driven insane.
Don't you get it? We're the good guys who don't invade other countries without just cause (srsly!), so we have the right to torture anyone we think is secretly planning to attack us. But if Iran were to capture and torture some of our soldiers then that would be evil, because all our soldiers are perfectly good while Iranians are the bad guys. It's all so simple.
oh yeah, i forgot. standards for the darkie moooslems are different than the standards we should apply to ourselves.
sigh… it's really sad how the force of someone's ideology can so completely erase any ability to engage in rational thought
"the situation is actually quite simple when you break it down. imagine iran capturing some of our soldiers and doing to them what we did to our War on Terror prisoners. now imagine the unrestrained apoplexy that would be unleashed at the National Review (and the Unreligious Right)."
The U.S. hasn't tortured any soldiers, so you might want to try a better analogy. Iran would be well within its rights to torture any CIA operatives it captures, in order to protect its country. Torture is an occupational hazard for spies, saboteurs and terrorists. I can't speak for National Review, but there would be no apoplexy from me.
"Don't you get it? We're the good guys who don't invade other countries without just cause (srsly!), so we have the right to torture anyone we think is secretly planning to attack us"
That's certainly not an argument I'd ever make. But nice strawman.
""sigh… it's really sad how the force of someone's ideology can so completely erase any ability to engage in rational thought"
There's an ironic comment, coming from someone who has nothing but slurs for a someone with a differing opinion.
thanks for playing. the US tortured prisoners in its custody. don't take it from me, take it from the top Bush military justice official at Guantanamo:
"The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti…
You are welcome to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.
If you continue to deny that the US tortured people, you have let your ideology blind you to the truth, which is sad.
I just emailed the following toLTG Eric B. Schoomaker, Surgeon General, US Army. I encourage others to do something similar.
Sir,
As a 20 year MSC and son of a 30 year AF officer I was saddened to read that the IRC stated that military medics had assisted in torture of detainees.
This is not acceptable and the, "Commander told me to do it" excuse is also not acceptable.
You must find and discipline every medic involved -- especially leadership.
Thank you, Gerald H Fisher Maj, USARMY, Ret.
Right on. I will do the same. It is especially shameful that doctors and medical professionals assisted in the torture and violated their Hippocratic oath in the process. Very sad.