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Vocabulary > War / Terrorism > Prisoners > Torture, Abuse

Andy Singer

No Exit

Cagle

6.5.2009

A sketch by Thomas V. Curtis, a Reserve M.P. sergeant,

showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell.

In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths

NYT By TIM GOLDEN

Published: May 20, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html

The Week in Blog: In Search of an Outro

Crist endorsement launches conservative anti-GOP jihad (10:21)
Enviro bloggers divided on cap-and-trade bill (05:24)
Are social conservatives bad at politics? (07:23)
Dueling views of the Obama/Cheney torture speeches (05:51)
Is the torture debate hurting Obama’s long-term agenda? (06:20)
When Obama goes off teleprompter, gaffes ensue? (02:30)

New York Times > Blogging Heads TV
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/19902?in=35:08&out=41:28

Recorded: May 21 - Posted: May 22, 2009

Empathy for the Torture Experts

Who really made the torture memos happen and why? (11:58)
The ideal torture truth commission (03:52)
The fiction of “torture kept us safe” (06:33)
Should judges have anti-empathy? (10:14)
The non-PC case for a diverse Supreme Court (07:55)
Why experts won’t save us (09:11)

New York Times > Blogging Heads TV
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/19802?in=18:49&out=25:22

Recorded: May 14 - Posted: May 18, 2009

Start Snitchin’

MCs Eli and Reihan drop some knowledge (09:14)
Eli tweets about Roxana Saberi. The blogosphere explodes (07:28)
Eli: The CIA exists to break the law (04:26)
Why torture vexes Reihan (12:28)
Are Americans pro-torture? (06:32)
Is Israel’s strategic nuclear ambiguity coming to an end? (03:45)

New York Times > Blogging Heads TV
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/19716?in=39:53&out=46:25

Recorded: May 13 - Posted: May 14, 2009

Released prisoner of war Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm

is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California on March 17, 1973,

as he returns home from the Vietnam War.

AP Photo/Sal Veder

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Vietnam, 35 years later 7 May 2010
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/vietnam_35_years_later.html

Other caption / source

Released prisoner of war Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm
is greeted by his family
at Travis Air Force Base in Foster City, Calif.,
as he returns home from the Vietnam War,
March 17, 1973.
In the lead isStirm's daughter Lori, 15,
followed by son Robert, 14;daughter Cynthia, 11; wife Loretta and son Roger, 12.

AP Photo/Sal Veder
http://www.nandotimes.com/nt/images/century/photos/century0262.html

Geneva convention

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/geneva-conventions

Prisoner of War PoW / POW

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/09/eric-lomax

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/world/asia/pow-is-focus-of-talks-on-taliban-prisoner-swap.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-21-pows-torture_N.htm

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1890415,00.html

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1890261,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/01/iraq.usa1?DCMP=EMC-thewrap08

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/feb/11/iraq.uk

in custody

prisoner swap

detainee

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-prisoner-abuse-cases

torture / torture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/torture

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/torture/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/opinion/indisputable-torture-of-prisoners.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/world/us-practiced-torture-after-9-11-nonpartisan-review-concludes.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/opinion/sunday/torture-lies-and-hollywood.html

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/tortures-future/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/bruni-torture-and-exceptionalism.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/world/asia/un-report-finds-routine-abuse-of-afghan-detainees.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/politics/04torture.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/30/uganda-kenya

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/30/torture-kenya

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/george-bush-torture-admission-democracy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/05/interrogation-techniques-iraq-inmates

ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/nov/03/british-troops-use-torture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/oct/23/iraq-war-logs-torture-frago242

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/opinion/l14torture.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/opinion/08tue1.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04mon1.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2009/aug/04/torture-human-rights

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/jul/27/torture-saudiarabia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/18/usa.terrorism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1802211,00.html

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/01/20/fullsacco1.pdf

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1214773,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4079541,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1215255,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gall/0,8542,1211872,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/01/iraq.usa1?DCMP=EMC-thewrap08

Revealed: Pentagon's link to Iraqi torture centres 6 March 2013

Exclusive: General David Petraeus and 'dirty wars' veteran
behind commando units implicated in detainee abuse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/mar/06/james-steele-america-iraq-video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington

be tortured to death

outsourcing of torture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/30/torture-kenya

Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/oct/19/torture-uk-britain-blood-government

Dilawar (also known as Dilawar of Yakubi) circa 1979 – December 10, 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/392225/Taxi-to-the-Dark-Side/overview

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/movies/18taxi.html

Physicians for Human Rights PHR

http://phrtorturepapers.org/

be slaughtered

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2235638,00.html

torture room

torturer

interrogator

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1237239,00.html

UK military interrogation manuals

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/25/uk-military-interrogation-manuals

pattern of interrogation

harsh interrogation methods

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/17/baha-mousa-death-general-horrified

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/baha-mousa

"enhanced interrogation techniques"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/18/usa.terrorism

interrogation techniques > stress hooding noise nudity dogs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/19/humanrights.interrogationtechniques

shout abuse at ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/jul/13/baha-mousa-inquiry

abuse

abuse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-prisoner-abuse-cases

waterboard

waterboarding

Waterboarding is a centuries-old practice
used to coerce prisoners during interrogations
by using water to cut off oxygen and to create both the feeling and fear of drowning.
It was approved by the Justice Department under President George W. Bush
for use by the Central Intelligence Agency on so-called "high value'' terrorism suspects,
then barred by President Obama on his second day in office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/bruni-torture-and-exceptionalism.html

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/torture/waterboarding/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/bruni-torture-and-exceptionalism.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/no-charges-destruction-cia-interrogation-tapes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/george-bush-torture-admission-democracy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/british-deny-bush-claims-foil-terror
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/nov/09/george-bush-waterboarding-torture
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/george-bush-memoirs-waterboarding

beating

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1217973,00.html

sleep deprivation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1245236,00.html

mistreat

ill-treatment

misconduct

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-06-02-ishaqi_x.htm

abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Iraq

http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11367615
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/2008/02/abu_ghraib_shocking_new_images.html
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_zimbardo
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/gallery_abu_ghraib
http://www.salon.com//news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/index.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D81738F930A15752C0A9639C8B63
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/08/25/abughraib.report/index.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/20/usa.iraq
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9506EFD81630F93AA35755C0A9629C8B63

The New York Times > Times topics > Abu Ghraib

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/abu_ghraib/index.html

Abu Ghraib: shocking new images, shocking claims 2008

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/2008/02/abu_ghraib_shocking_new_images.html
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_zimbardo
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/gallery_abu_ghraib

The Abu Ghraib files 2006

279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army's internal investigation
record a harrowing three months of detainee abuse inside the notorious prison.

Warning: Photos contain disturbing images of violence, abuse and humiliation

http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/index.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-02-16-prison-abuse_x.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4718328.stm

Errol Morris’s “Standard Operating Procedure” 2008

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0896866/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jul/18/documentary
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/movies/26morris.html
http://www.timeout.com/film/features/show-feature/5147/errol-morris-on-standard-operating-procedure.html
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/movies/25stan.html
http://www.arte.tv/fr/cinema-fiction/Berlinale-2008/Tous-les-films/1927544.html
http://www.errolmorris.com/

Abu Ghraib > Pvt. Lynndie England

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/03/abu-ghraib-lynndie-england-interview
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/28/iraq.usa
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=7988
http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/iraq/england1.jpg

Abu Ghraib > Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/oct/22/usa.iraq

war crimes

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/09/british-military-iraq-war-crimes

Disturbing New Photos From Abu Ghraib
By Wired.com Staff
See related story: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib

02.28.2008 | 12:00 AM

This photo from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is taken from a presentation by Philip Zimbardo
on how ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, become evil

Image 7 of 10
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/gallery_abu_ghraib?slide=7&slideView=2

TED 2008: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib
Wired By Kim Zetter 02.28.08 | 12:00 AM
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_zimbardo

Disturbing New Photos From Abu Ghraib
By Wired.com Staff
See related story: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib
02.28.08 | 12:00 AM

This photo from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is taken from a presentation by Philip Zimbardo
on how ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, become evil

Image 3 of 10
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/gallery_abu_ghraib?slide=3&slideView=3

TED 2008: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib
Wired By Kim Zetter 02.28.08 | 12:00 AM
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_zimbardo

Disturbing New Photos From Abu Ghraib
By Wired.com Staff
See related story: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib
02.28.08 | 12:00 AM

This photo from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is taken from a presentation by Philip Zimbardo
on how ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, become evil

Image 1 of 10
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/gallery_abu_ghraib

TED 2008: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib
Wired By Kim Zetter 02.28.08 | 12:00 AM
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_zimbardo

Disturbing New Photos From Abu Ghraib
By Wired.com Staff
See related story: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib
02.28.08 | 12:00 AM

This photo from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is taken from a presentation by Philip Zimbardo
on how ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, become evil

Image 2 of 10
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/gallery_abu_ghraib?slide=2&slideView=5

TED 2008: How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib
Wired By Kim Zetter 02.28.08 | 12:00 AM
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_zimbardo

Steve Bell

The Guardian

14.5.2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/archive/stevebell/0,7371,337764,00.html

M: Secretary of Defense DONALD H. RUMSFELD

The Guardian

13 May 2004

Torture and Exceptionalism

November 14, 2011
The New York Times
By FRANK BRUNI

If we truly believe ourselves to be exceptional, a model for all the world and an example for all of history, then why would we practice torture?

That’s what waterboarding is, and that’s why President Obama banned it — rightly. When you pour water onto someone until he gasps for air and feels as if he’s drowning, you’re not merely enhancing your interrogation. You’re putting him through a hell as physical as it is psychological. You’re torturing him, by any sane definition of the term.

And yet waterboarding was back up for discussion and even back in a kind of perverse vogue on Saturday night, at the same Republican presidential debate where Mitt Romney, pivoting to a favorite melody, sang the song of American greatness and singularity — American exceptionalism. That juxtaposition was odd in the extreme.

I came away from the debate, which was devoted to foreign policy, with all sorts of qualms and questions, including why Newt Gingrich has submitted to an electoral process he feels such palpable condescension toward.

But mostly I came away thinking that a great deal of what the candidates propose flies squarely in the face of the particular stripe of national pride they simultaneously trumpet.

This is a crowd that’s big on exceptionalism, and not according to its onetime definition: as a reference to the peculiar and advantageous circumstances of our country’s genesis. They’re asserting that we have a unique global standing, our eminence essential and our values worthy of export.

“This century must be an American century,” Romney said, and he digressed widely from the specific topic at hand to say it.

“We have a president right now who thinks America is just another nation,” he added, not representing Obama’s past remarks entirely fairly. “America is an exceptional nation.”

Romney didn’t get a chance to weigh in on waterboarding, so we don’t know whether he actually favors its restored use, as Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain said they did, and as Rick Perry seemed to signal as well.

But we know Romney doesn’t consider it torture, because one of his senior aides, Eric Fehrnstrom, sent out a Twitter message after the debate saying flatly that it isn’t, and a campaign spokeswoman on Monday confirmed that that was indeed Romney’s own view. The spokeswoman added: “At the same time, he’s not going to specify the enhanced interrogation techniques he would use against terrorists.”

From the debate stage in South Carolina came not only calls for waterboarding — which Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul, to their credit, rejected — but also the churlish suggestion that that the United States withhold even the first dollar of foreign aid to a country until it proved itself wholly deserving. This came courtesy of Perry and Gingrich.

From Rick Santorum there were warm thoughts of clandestine missions to kill Iranian scientists. Immigration wasn’t discussed this time around, but when it has been in recent months, Cain has mentioned the digging of a moat along the Mexican border — filled with alligators, no less! — and Bachmann has been all about the ludicrously impractical construction of a fence, which Cain at one point suggested electrifying as an extra deterrent to anyone with thoughts of scaling it. Then he said he was joking. A belly laugh rose up from all seven continents.

Of course the candidates talk tough in large part as a way to accuse Obama of being soft. It’s typical political posturing, inevitable political pandering.

But their oft-lofted notion that he has raised a white flag in the war on terror is absurd. While his presidency has had considerable flaws and disappointments, that’s not one of them.

Yes, he ended waterboarding — which is also what John McCain, who has real moral authority on the issue, said he would do. (On Monday McCain said he was “very disappointed” by the discussion at the debate.)

But Obama has dispatched more drones than Dick Cheney likely ever fantasized about, including the one that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen never given any trial. He ordered the mission that ended the life of Osama bin Laden. These aren’t the actions of a commander in chief apologetic about the use of force. And they’re proof that you can be plenty fearsome without whipping out the instruments of torture.

We face difficult decisions and a tricky balancing act when it comes to keeping this country safe, whether from terrorists abroad or criminals coming across the southern border. And there’s no doubt we can’t be as high-minded as we’d sometimes like. I for one am not losing any sleep over Awlaki.

But we have to be careful about how far we go — how merciless our strategies, how self-serving our positions — because the rightful burden of the leadership we insist on is behavior that’s better than everybody else’s, not the same or worse. Exceptionalism doesn’t mean picking and choosing when to be big and when to be small.

Torture and Exceptionalism, NYT, 14.11.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/bruni-torture-and-exceptionalism.html

U.N. Finds ‘Systematic’ Torture in Afghanistan

October 10, 2011
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — Suspects are hung by their hands, beaten with cables, and in some cases their genitals are twisted until they lose consciousness in detention facilities run by the Afghan intelligence service and the Afghan national police, according to a study released Monday by the United Nations here.

The report provides a devastating picture of the abuses committed by arms of the Afghanistan government as the American-led foreign forces here are moving to wind down their presence after a decade of war. The abuses were uncovered even as American and other Western trainers and mentors had been working closely with the ministries overseeing the detention facilities and funded their operations.

Acting on early draft of the report seen last month, NATO stopped handing over detainees to the Afghans in several areas of the country.

The report found evidence of “a compelling pattern and practice of systematic torture and ill-treatment” during interrogation in the accounts of nearly half of the detainees of the intelligence service, known as the National Directorate of Intelligence, who were interviewed by United Nations researchers. The national police treatment of detainees was somewhat less severe and widespread, the report found. Its research covered 47 facilities sites in 22 provinces.

“Use of interrogation methods, including suspension, beatings, electric shock, stress positions and threatened sexual assault is unacceptable by any standard of international human rights law,” the report said.

One detainee described being brought in for interrogation in Kandahar and having the interrogator ask if he knew the name of the office and then, after the man answered, “You should confess what you have done in the past as Taliban, even stones confess here.”

The man was beaten for several days for hours at a time with electric wire and then signed a confession, the report said.

The report pointed out that even though the abusive practices are endemic, the Afghan government does not condone torture and has explicitly said the abuses found by the United Nations are not government policy.

“Reform is both possible and desired,” said Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan, noting that the government had cooperated with the report’s researchers and has begun to take remedial action.

“We take this report very seriously,” said Shaida Abdali, the deputy director of Afghanistan’s National Security Council.

“Our government, especially the president, has taken a very strong stand on the protection of everyone’s human rights, their humanity, everywhere and especially in prisons and in detention,” he said, adding since he had not yet read the full document.

The government issued a lengthy response to the report in which the intelligence service denied using electric shock, threat of rape and the twisting of sexual organs, but allowed that there were “deficiencies” in a war-torn country that routinely faced suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism. It also said it had set up an assessment unit to look in to the problem, and had dismissed several employees at a unit known as Department 124, where the United Nations said the torture appeared to have been the most endemic. The intelligence service is now admonishing newly assigned interrogators to observe human rights, the government said in its response.

Ultimately the prosecution of the torturers is required, said Georgette Gagnon, the director of the human rights for the United Nations here, in order to “prevent and end such acts in the future.”

In the absence of remedial changes by the Afghans, the information could trigger a provision under American law, known as the Leahy amendment, that would stop some financing for the Afghan security forces, according to human rights experts.

The report overall raises broad ethical questions about the American funding of foreign security forces whose military and law enforcement officials routinely use torture. There have been a number of instances that raise similar questions including in Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and El Salvador, according to a RAND report in 2006. Aid to Colombia in fighting its drug cartels and insurgents also has raised some of these issues.

In the case of Afghanistan, there appears to have been little effort made to scrutinize the country’s security practices, especially for detainees, perhaps in part because of political pressure to move as much responsibility as possible to the Afghans and to reduce American involvement here.

Of the 324 conflict-related detainees interviewed, 89 had been handed over to the Afghan intelligence service or the police by international military forces and in 19 cases, the men were tortured once they were in Afghan custody. The United Nations Convention Against Torture prohibits the transfer of a detained person to the custody of another state where there are substantial grounds for believing they are at risk of torture.

With that in mind as well as the military’s institutional view that torture is not a reliable way to obtain usable intelligence, NATO Commander Gen. John Allen, after seeing a draft of the report in early September, halted transfers of suspected insurgents to 16 of the facilities identified as sites where torture or abuse routinely takes place.

Earlier in the summer, NATO already had halted detainee transfers to intelligence and police authorities in four provinces based on other reports of torture and mistreatment. General Allen has now initiated a plan to investigate the facilities, help in training in modern interrogation techniques and then monitor the Afghan government’s practices. The American Embassy is heavily involved now in working on a long-term monitoring program for detention facilities and is working with NATO to put that in place.

U.N. Finds ‘Systematic’ Torture in Afghanistan, NYT, 10.10.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/world/asia/un-report-finds-routine-abuse-of-afghan-detainees.html

Doctors Who Aid Torture

June 7, 2010
The New York Times

Disturbing new questions have been raised about the role of doctors and other medical professionals in helping the Central Intelligence Agency subject terrorism suspects to harsh treatment, abuse and torture.

The Red Cross previously documented, from interviews with “high-value” prisoners, that medical personnel helped facilitate abuses in the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation program” during the Bush administration. Now Physicians for Human Rights has suggested that the medical professionals may also have violated national and international laws setting limits on what research can be performed on humans.

The physicians’ group, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., analyzed a wide range of previously released government documents and reports, many of them heavily censored. It found that the Bush administration used medical personnel — including doctors, psychologists and physician assistants — to help justify acts that had long been classified by law and treaty as illegal or unethical and to redefine them as safe, legal and effective when used on terrorism suspects.

The group’s report focused particularly on a few issues where medical personnel played an important role — determining how far a harsh interrogation could go, providing legal cover against prosecution and designing future interrogation procedures. The actual monitoring data are not publicly available, but the group was able to deduce from the guidelines governing the program what role the health professionals played, assuming they followed the rules.

In the case of waterboarding, a technique in which prisoners are brought to the edge of drowning, health professionals were required to monitor the practice and keep detailed medical records. Their findings led to several changes, including a switch to saline solution as the near-drowning agent instead of water, ostensibly to protect the health of detainees who ingest large volumes of liquid but also, the group says, to allow repeated use of waterboarding on the same subject.

Another government memorandum concluded from medical observations on 25 detainees that combining several techniques — say a face slap with water dousing or a stress kneeling position — caused no more pain than when the techniques were used individually. That was used to justify the application of multiple techniques at the same time.

The group concludes that health professionals who facilitated these practices were in essence conducting research and experimentation on human subjects. The main purposes of such research, the group says, were to determine how to use various techniques, to calibrate the levels of pain and to create a legal basis for defending interrogators from potential prosecution under antitorture laws. The interrogators could claim that they had acted in good faith in accord with medical judgments of safety and had not intended to inflict extreme suffering.

The report from the physicians’ group does not prove its case beyond doubt — how could it when so much is still hidden? — but it rightly calls on the White House and Congress to investigate the potentially illegal human experimentation and whether those who authorized or conducted it should be punished. Those are just two of the many unresolved issues from the Bush administration that President Obama and Congressional leaders have swept under the carpet.

Doctors Who Aid Torture, NYT, 7.6.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/opinion/08tue1.html

Editorial

The Torture Sessions

April 20, 2008
The New York Times

Ever since Americans learned that American soldiers and intelligence agents were torturing prisoners, there has been a disturbing question: How high up did the decision go to ignore United States law, international treaties, the Geneva Conventions and basic morality?

The answer, we have learned recently, is that — with President Bush’s clear knowledge and support — some of the very highest officials in the land not only approved the abuse of prisoners, but participated in the detailed planning of harsh interrogations and helped to create a legal structure to shield from justice those who followed the orders.

We have long known that the Justice Department tortured the law to give its Orwellian blessing to torturing people, and that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a list of ways to abuse prisoners. But recent accounts by ABC News and The Associated Press said that all of the president’s top national security advisers at the time participated in creating the interrogation policy: Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Rumsfeld; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; Colin Powell, the secretary of state; John Ashcroft, the attorney general; and George Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

These officials did not have the time or the foresight to plan for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq or the tenacity to complete the hunt for Osama bin Laden. But they managed to squeeze in dozens of meetings in the White House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to prisoner abuse, including brutal methods that civilized nations consider to be torture.

Mr. Bush told ABC News this month that he knew of these meetings and approved of the result.

Those who have followed the story of the administration’s policies on prisoners may not be shocked. We have read the memos from the Justice Department redefining torture, claiming that Mr. Bush did not have to follow the law, and offering a blueprint for avoiding criminal liability for abusing prisoners.

The amount of time and energy devoted to this furtive exercise at the very highest levels of the government reminded us how little Americans know, in fact, about the ways Mr. Bush and his team undermined, subverted and broke the law in the name of saving the American way of life.

We have questions to ask, in particular, about the involvement of Ms. Rice, who has managed to escape blame for the catastrophic decisions made while she was Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, and Mr. Powell, a career Army officer who should know that torture has little value as an interrogation method and puts captured Americans at much greater risk. Did they raise objections or warn of the disastrous effect on America’s standing in the world? Did anyone?

Mr. Bush has sidestepped or quashed every attempt to uncover the breadth and depth of his sordid actions. Congress is likely to endorse a cover-up of the extent of the illegal wiretapping he authorized after 9/11, and we are still waiting, with diminishing hopes, for a long-promised report on what the Bush team really knew before the Iraq invasion about those absent weapons of mass destruction — as opposed to what it proclaimed.

At this point it seems that getting answers will have to wait, at least, for a new Congress and a new president. Ideally, there would be both truth and accountability. At the very minimum the public needs the full truth.

Some will call this a backward-looking distraction, but only by fully understanding what Mr. Bush has done over eight years to distort the rule of law and violate civil liberties and human rights can Americans ever hope to repair the damage and ensure it does not happen again.

The Torture Sessions, NYT, 20.4.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/opinion/20sun1.html

April 18, 1945

A Nazi camp and its history

From the Guardian Archive

Wednesday April 18, 1945
Guardian

Records kept by the SS Oberführer in charge show the deaths at the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar numbered 6,477 in January, 5,614 in February, 5,479 in March, and 915 in April. The April toll was only up to the 10th of the month. The next day the American Third Army overran the area and brought release to the 21,000 inmates at this resort of starvation, torture, hangings and shootings.

Mostly the inmates were pitiful wrecks. At one time up to 80,000 people from a score of nations were here made to work long hours on the production of bombs.

When the sound of gunfire from the approaching Americans was heard, thousands of the inmates were marched off by 600 SS Guards to an unknown destination. Then the camp underground acted, overpowered the remaining guards, locked them up in small cells, and ran the camp themselves till the Americans arrived.

There were mass exterminations of 12,500 Jews in May and June, 1938. After the Nazi occupation of Austria a great influx of political prisoners and Jews took place.

With the outbreak of war several thousand Vienna and Polish Jews were slaughtered. One hundred and four Polish snipers taken prisoner were left foodless until they died. After the Munich beer-cellar bomb incident in 1939, 21 Jews were shot at random and the remainder forbidden food for five days.

In July, 1941, two truckloads of prisoners taken to Pirna died under poison-gas experiments. In March, 1942, four truckloads of 90 Jews each were taken to Bernburg experimental laboratory and died there.

In October, 1941, about 7,000 Russian prisoners of war were shot in the stables at Buchenwald, the usual scene of the shootings. According to prisoners, the outstanding place of extermination was Auschwitz, near Cracow, where they said 4,000,000 Jewish, Polish and Russian men, women, and children were liquidated. Buchenwald evidence repeatedly writes off hundreds as transported to Auschwitz.

Some 60,000 to 75,000 opponents of Hitlerism have perished at Buchenwald. Here, over these acres of suffering and misery enclosed by electrically charged fencing, is the stark gruesome reality of Fascism, with cells, a crematorium - in the ovens of which still lay charred skeletons and piles of ashes - a gallows, an experimental laboratory and a cellar store in which normally 500 bodies awaited transfer to the busy crematorium.

Hangings were carried out in a cellar from which an electric lift carried the bodies to the incinerators above.

From the Guardian Archive > A Nazi camp and its history, G, Wednesday April 18, 1945,
Republished 18.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1755561,00.html

October 21, 1918

Our prisoners are being overworked

From the Guardian archive

Monday October 21, 1918
Guardian

The following are extracts from letters written by British prisoners of war in Germany.

These letters are censored in Germany, but sometimes through carelessness, the complaints are not deleted, and sometimes passages marked by examiners as undesirable are left in or only partly deleted. In this way we learn what these men are suffering. One writes: "I am working in chemico-manure works near Stettin. It is heavy work, loading up sacks of manure in railway trucks and unloading barges of ironstone. We work ten hours a day, barring Sundays. We get half a pound of bread and three bowls of soup a day. There is no stay in the food for a man to work on ... I never felt so weak before."

Another letter runs: "We have been working here three months. It is what they call a surface mine or an open mine; the hours are too long ... The Germans told us it was a reprisal, as our people were keeping German prisoners in our trenches."

Most of the letters complain of the long hours. One man states that he is working in a coal pit for twelve hours a day, and for this he is receiving the sum of five shillings a week.

Another writes: "I came to work at six this morning, and won't finish till six tomorrow morning. I tell you it's no joke." And another writes: "I still manage to put a letter together, such as it is. Yes, work, and it's all work, only 14 hours per day, not long when you say it quick."

The worst cases are in the mines. Here is a sample: "The bosses in the mines are all-powerful, and frequently order men who are prisoners of war to work two shifts, which means 16 hours underground, or 19 hours' absence from their living quarters, and that on four small slices of brown bread, unless they take some with them out of their pockets; also they are abused without the slightest provocation.

"There are 24 young English lads who arrived here last week, and who, ignorant of the language and mining alike, have been beaten with sticks. Slapping the face with the hand is a common occurrence, and you have to consider the name 'swine' a term of endearment. In my own case, I have been very savagely attacked on two occasions by under-bosses, because I resented this face-slapping and being ordered to work two shifts without reason, and I have ample evidence in the shape of big scars on my head made by a pit lamp."

These are the things that have escaped the German censor. What of those that he has blotted out?

From the Guardian archive > October 21, 1918 > Our prisoners are being overworked, G,
Republished 21.10.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1927991,00.html

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