We were told about doctors and torture in Iraq back in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009. Not new. [View all]

[madfloridian]

All over the news this last week or so there are a lot of articles about doctors and the use of torture on detainees during the war on terror.

The news that doctors were aware of or took part in torture in Iraq is nothing really new. Or at least not if we were paying attention. See the recent NBC News report. It is called "'Big, striking horror:' US military doctors allowed torture of detainees, new study claims"

Medical personnel watching as pain is inflicted....a Rumsfeld legacy?

LISA MILLAR: The Red Cross has slammed medical personnel who allegedly supervised interrogations and the torture of terror suspects by the CIA. Based on interviews with 14 terror suspects, the Red Cross has found medics monitored prisoners' vital signs to make sure they didn't drown during waterboarding. And it says that may amount to direct participation in torture.

EMILY BOURKE: The individual testimonies of 14 so-called 'high value' terror suspects detail a litany of torture techniques used during interrogations at secret locations and at Guantanamo Bay. They describe confinement in a box, exposure to extreme cold, sleep deprivation and waterboarding. But the Red Cross also found health professionals gave instructions to CIA interrogators to continue, adjust, or to stop particular methods.

That was from 2009.

This was from 2006. Time Magazine.

How Doctors Got Into the Torture Business

Soldiers are trained to kill and doctors to heal. At least that's how we usually understand those two professions. But wars can often distort reality, and the war on terrorism has turned into a test case. An inspiring example is that of Colonel Kelly Faucette, M.D. He recently wrote about caring for a new patient at the intensive-care unit of the 47th Combat Support Hospital in Mosul, Iraq. The patient was a terrorist insurgent, a man who planted hidden roadside bombs to murder civilians and Faucette's fellow soldiers. Faucette wrote in his local paper: "Something inside me wants to walk up to this guy ... and just clobber him." But Faucette didn't. Instead he healed him before sending him to a jail, and by that act of healing he helped heal Iraq.

That's the America I know and love. But it is not, alas, the only face of America in this war. One of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's first instructions for military interrogations outside the Geneva Conventions was that military doctors should be involved in monitoring torture. It was a fateful decision, and we learn much more about its consequences in a new book based on 35,000 pages of government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The book is called Oath Betrayed (to be published June 27) by medical ethicist Dr. Stephen Miles, and it is a harrowing documentation of how the military medical profession has been corrupted by the Bush-Rumsfeld interrogation rules.

From 2004. The New England Journal of Medicine

Doctors and Torture

There is increasing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Such medical complicity suggests still another disturbing dimension of this broadening scandal.

We know that medical personnel have failed to report to higher authorities wounds that were clearly caused by torture and that they have neglected to take steps to interrupt this torture. In addition, they have turned over prisoners' medical records to interrogators who could use them to exploit the prisoners' weaknesses or vulnerabilities. We have not yet learned the extent of medical involvement in delaying and possibly falsifying the death certificates of prisoners who have been killed by torturers.

A May 22 article on Abu Ghraib in the New York Times states that "much of the evidence of abuse at the prison came from medical documents" and that records and statements "showed doctors and medics reporting to the area of the prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch wounds, tend to collapsed prisoners or see patients with bruised or reddened genitals."1 According to the article, two doctors who gave a painkiller to a prisoner for a dislocated shoulder and sent him to an outside hospital recognized that the injury was caused by his arms being handcuffed and held over his head for "a long period," but they did not report any suspicions of abuse. A staff sergeant's medic who had seen the prisoner in that position later told investigators that he had instructed a military policeman to free the man but that he did not do so. A nurse, when called to attend to a prisoner who was having a panic attack, saw naked Iraqis in a human pyramid with sandbags over their heads but did not report it until an investigation was held several months later.

And finally from 2003 there are the shocking pictures from a Norwegian newspaper of Iraqi detainees being walked naked through the streets at gunpoint. This report does not mention doctors, but it was most definitely a warning sign to keep our eyes wide open. It was so obvious that all involved had to have known. Taking away one's humanity is a sure sign that worse is on the way.

We saw pictures from Iraq from a paper in Norway in 2003. We knew we were tormenting them then.

It was a shock to see the picture from the Norwegian paper, Dagbladet. The article is still there today, and so are the pictures. I remember that day in April when I called Senator John Warren's office and sent them a link to the website while I was on the phone. They claimed ignorance of course. I called Senator Bill Nelson's office and did the same. They knew nothing either.

The articles from Amnesty International and Dagbladet. If you follow the links the pictures are still there at Dagbladet.

Amnesty International expressed concern today at the disturbing article and images portrayed in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet which show American soldiers escorting naked Iraqi men through a park in Baghdad. The pictures reveal that someone has written the words Ali Baba - Haram(i) (which means Ali Baba - thief) in Arabic on the prisoners' chests.

The article quotes a US military officer as saying that this treatment is an effective method of deterring thieves from entering the park and is a method which will be used again; another US military officer is quoted as saying that US soldiers are not allowed to treat prisoners inhumanely.

..."Whatever the reason for their detention, these men must at all times be treated humanely. The US authorities must investigate this incident and publicly release their findings."

Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention clearly states that "Protected persons are entitled in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manner and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity".

The NBC News report just out makes it sound like this is just now being discovered. Instead I would say eyes have simply been shut and facts ignored.

I am not sure if knowing all this for so long should be blamed on our pathetic corporate media system, or if it goes to the prevalent attitude of people not wanting to know...in a country in which many are in denial.