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Red Cross: CIA Interrogation Program Was "Inhuman"
The journalist Mark Danner has obtained the entire report on torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which he published excerpts from last month. The report has been posted on the website of the New York Review of Books. Danner's new writeup of it is here.
The major new revelation concerns the active participation of medical officers in the interrogation of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons. The report, written in 2007, concludes that these officers committed gross violations of medical ethics, and in some cases participated in torture. The report called the CIA program "inhuman."
From the Washington Post's writeup:
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 report quoted one medical official as telling a detainee: "I look after your body only because we need you for information."
And:
[T]he 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."
And:
[T]he 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.
The Obama administration told the Post that the CIA has long since ended the program.
The big question now is whether the release of the report will add to the pressure on the administration to open an inquiry into whether Bush administration officials broke the law when they ordered harsh interrogation tactics.
For some interesting background on the role of army psychologists in abetting Bush's torture policy, see this 2007 story from the Washington Monthly.
Josh
Zachary
I'll bet this doesn't get near as much play in the MSM as Michelle Obama's sleeveless dress.
April 7, 2009 9:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, arms control is a much bigger issue!
April 7, 2009 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
into whether Bush administration officials broke the law
whether? Are you serious? Is this really an objective question at this point?
If this isn't breaking the law, then what the fuck is?
April 7, 2009 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
What good is it to be American if this is what it means? So if my doctor was in the military now I have to wonder if he was a Cuban Mengele? wtf?
April 7, 2009 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
I sincerely pray that the attorney general will suggest hiring a special prosecutor, releasing the Obama administration from being envolved, to investigate and prosecute those that committed crimes -- crimes we KNOW were committed.
We especially need to see those that gave the ORDERS to torture and spy on Americans to PAY for their crimes(sins) against America and the world.
April 7, 2009 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
This must be brought to prosecution. The medical staff can be handled by the medical boards, the senior staff must be convicted of war crimes. It is about the identity of our nation. Without prosecution, we are no better than Stalin and the gulags, or Pinochet, or the Taliban.
April 7, 2009 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
And here Scott Horton details the great lengths congressional Republicans are still willing to go to cover for the Bush administration's criminal behavior. How can anybody doubt that the Republican party has lost all its moral authority and political credibility when it displays this level of open contempt for rule of law and the democratic process?
The congressional Republicans are basically threatening to leverage their minority position to recklessly sabotage core congressional functions in order to abet the Bush administration's criminal wrong-doings and to thwart efforts to restore proper constitutional order. It's almost like there needs to be a distinct, independent law enforcement entity with authority to investigate and prosecute legislators with crimes of legislative abuse these days, the entire system has become so overrun with bad actors using scorched earth tactics.
April 7, 2009 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Many people used to crow, as many still do; "This is the greatest country in the world."
Are we still "the greatest country in the world" after 8 years of the Bush/Cheney gang and all they have wrought?
April 7, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
What's needed is a person equivalent to the officer of the Roman Republic called a "tribune." A tribune is a sacrosanct, elected plebeian who could stop the imposition of unjust measures by the (aristocratic) Senate by stating "Veto" ("I forbid"). Harming a tribune was punishable by death.
April 7, 2009 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
but how would a tribune help in cases like this, when the minority party in the legislature is using its powers to wreck the legislative process to prevent needed legislation from being passed or to block crucial appointments from being made, as in this case?
April 7, 2009 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is how the Bush administration soiled our country for the foreseeable future.
They got lawyers to tell them what they were doing was legal.
They got doctors to witness the torture proceedings and tell them when it was safe to continue. And when somebody died, they got the doctors to say the death was "natural causes."
They got us, the American people, to sit quietly by and acquiesce in this garbage. And where does it leave us? It leaves us with our faces hanging out when that jerk in North Korea holds two American women as human shields and tell us not to worry because "We are not Guantanamo."
Our Founding Fathers would weep at how we have been brought low.
April 7, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Dr. Mengele I presume? Who has given you your instructions?"
"This youngster, what program of experiment would you like to put him in? Would you lke to watch him wiggle? Or do you want him segregated to the death chambers?"
April 7, 2009 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
And the repubs in Congress are threatening to filibuster every nominee from Obama if he releases the memos. I hope he doesn't cave on this one!
April 7, 2009 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
CVille,
almost every day brings new horrid stories of the Bush/Cheney gang vis a vis torture, Gitmo etc.
One would suspect these stories will bring more pressure to bear on Obama to release the memos and investigate the Bush/Cheney gang.
I have yet to see any positive sign that this will happen. What I see is delay and obfuscation.
April 7, 2009 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
The delay and obfuscation are all a part of Obama's looking forward rather than backward.
The problem has become: "Where are we now?"
Can we decide what looking forward is if we don't know where we stand now?
It also looks like Obama is caving to Republican threats.
So what else can we expect from a Democrat.
It is continually amazing how the Republicans can exert so much power as a minority party when the Democrats could exert absolutely no power when they were the minority party and how the Republicans exerted so much power while they were the majority party while the Democrats seem to be completely hamstrung now that they are in the majority.
April 7, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then the Senate should finally kill the filibuster.There are other ways to guarantee ample time for debate.
April 7, 2009 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is engaging in torture a crime? yes
Is torture an international crime? yes
Is Gitmo in or part of a foreign country? yes
Are crimes against humanity terrorist acts? not sure of the legalistics, but if not they should be
Is supporting foreign terror activities (material support) a Federal offense? yes
Is paying taxes supporting the commission of terrorism/crimes against humanity? evidently so
Are we all therefore terrorists?
April 7, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
JohnW1141 has a valid point. The desire to move forward notwithstanding, Americans know there is an infection here and if we don't move to cleanse this wound to our national honor then it will only fester and grow more toxic. I believe we should bring it all out into the open.
If the Republican base wants to get exercised over naming people who ordered torture and who followed orders, then let them. Most Americans are more instrospective than the Republican base is anyhow.
They'll never understand how important it is that we clean this wound.
April 7, 2009 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Long,
the Republicans released and put the Starr Report on the internet, unabridged of any salacious parts. Now they want to hide criminality.
Anyone that tries to deal with these people is frikkin nuts.
April 7, 2009 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
You, too, have a Long Memory, John. I commend you. I'd hate to find out my doctor participated in torture when he was in the service, but I'd still want to know. These people are unmitigated hypocrites, and it's time to label them what they are.
April 7, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe in God, but please, dear God, find out and release the names of the doctors, psychologists, and medical staff that participated in this torture.
And prosecute them.
April 7, 2009 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
If my memory serves me right, this nation just went to war rid a nation of a dictator precisely because he killed and tortured folks HE deemed a threat to him....
Now, many of those same people who hundreds of times commented on this same reasoning for ridding and punishing that scoundrel are now just as adamantly proposing to protect THEIR cronies who did the same!
And what is even worse, millions of voters will want those same people sent back into office next election cycle....
SAME on US, for not caring enough about our nation to teach REAL history rather than propaganda...
April 7, 2009 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink