Atul Gawande is horrified at the way medical doctors helped the torturers.
In a series of furious tweets on Wednesday, the New Yorker writer castigated clinicians for their role in helping the CIA carry out torture — and in some cases, effectively doing it themselves.
Reviewing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s newly released report, Gawande points to nearly a dozen individual examples of physicians playing a role in the CIA’s interrogation and treatment of detainees.
For instance, at least five detainees were subjected to forced rectal feeding or rectal rehydration — where CIA torturers infused large amounts of liquids into their rectums — one of the most gruesome parts of the Senate’s report, the Daily Beast‘s Shane Harris concludes.
But those procedures weren’t medically necessary. “It was doctors who devised the rectal infusions ‘as a means of behavior control,’” Gawande says.
And doctors also played a key role in helping detainees get back on their feet – so they could be tortured some more.
I just read Gawande’s series of tweets, and there’s one about doctors okaying forcing someone with broken bones in his foot to stand up for 52 hours.
…the Department of Defense issued a June 2005 memo that spelled out the “medical program principles and procedures for the protection and treatment” of detainees — presumably, a move that should [have] reinforced the need for proper medical care.
Yet on closer scrutiny, the guidelines were ethically “troubling,” Leonard Rubenstein and others wrote in JAMA. They created loopholes that allowed military physicians and other personnel to participate in torture activities, which were authorized by the United States but “absolutely prohibited” by international human rights law.
I hate it when the US flouts international human rights law. It’s shameful. Shameful.
“I hate it when the US flouts international human rights law” …and presumably, its own Constitution.
I’m sure Ophelia, that these revelations won’t inhibit your compatriots from appropriating the moral high ground and lecturing the rest of the world on human rights issues. However, it’s significant that Americans have exposed the truth about these atrocities, in many other countries both the victims and the truth would have been buried.
Well I’m not sure what you mean by compatriots. It won’t inhibit me from doing that, for one. I’m not going to let the crimes of Bush & his cronies stop me talking about the crimes of Boko Haram et al.
In a just world, the Hague would be pretty busy trying these Americans for the next few years.
“Primum non nocere.”
Well done, guys. Well done.
Ophelia,
Of course. My point was in regard to US government officials (not citizens) lecturing other countries about human rights violations while their war machine was simultaneously bombing the crap out of various defenceless Third World countries. Surely the lesson should have been learned in Indo China.
@4
Do doctors still take the oath?
Back when I first read it, I was recommending Steven Miles’ Oath Betrayed on this subject. It’s been a while, but I assume I still would recommend it, possibly even more since this report was published.
It’s not just international law, it’s US law, too.
RJW – ah. I mistook your meaning.
18 U.S. Code Chapter 113C – TORTURE
( http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-113C )
Pretty clear, huh?
And:
This would be that “rule of law” I’ve heard so much about.
Eesh.
I’m surprised Bush is still a supporter of capital punishment, given that some of the CIA’s victims died, and torture causing death is a capital crime in the US.
I still do not support capital punishment, even for Bush or Cheney. Life imprisonment would be enough, though they probably cannot possibly do any more damage than they have already done.
The laws on this stuff are actually quite clear. There’s only big grey areas in the mind of those engaging in motivated reasoning. For example, you may be surprised to learn that War Crimes are also illegal!!! No, really!!!!
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-118
Got it. Follow international law. Then you look at things like Article 25 of the Hague Convention 1907 —
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp#art25
I seem to recall there was some bombing of civilian buildings during the late unpleasantness in Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc.
Article 3 is particularly relevant:
Most of international humanitarian law avoids discussion of declared wars and whatnot; it simply deals with combatants and people are divided into two easy to use categories:
– combatants
– noncombatants
There’s no such thing in international law as an “illegal combatant” (they’re a combatant!) But simple logic says that if you’re either a combatant or a non-combatant and both have a right to be treated as prisoners of war, then the grey area under which prisoners have been held in Gitmo or worse, is simply nonexistent and has never existed except in the minds of the liars in Washington.
After listening to some of the shit the US government spouts about what is or isn’t a war crime, I read all the relevant stuff a few years ago. It’s quite illuminating. (pro tip: there’s no such thing as “collateral damage” there is only “war crime”) At that time, I was trying to answer the question: “is cyberwar war crime?” It’s surprisingly straightforward: civilian communications systems are not military targets (which is why we call them “civilian”) and targeting them in a conflict is therefore a war crime.
As the (self-appointed) World Police, shouldn’t we be holding ourselves (Americans) to a higher standard?
@WMDKitty,
I think our World Police are acting pretty much like our regular police at the moment…
@14 Marcus Ranum,
My guess is that currently the military could appropriate any civilian communications system and militarise it, so it’s doubtful that the distinction between ‘military and civilian’ systems has any practical application, except in very narrow circumstances.
During WW2, because of the ‘Total War’ doctrine, the Allies regarded factories producing war materiel as legitimate targets, even though most of the workers were civilians.
Then there’s the distinction between an ‘unjust war’ and ‘unjust conduct in a just war’, in my opinion, both the Second Gulf War and the invasion of Afghanistan were unjust wars, ie war crimes.