Tortured Logic
"Torture" is defined in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as "an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind." According to The Washington Post, methods of torture that have been used by the CIA include waterboarding (mock drowning), exposure to extreme cold (including induced hypothermia), stress positions, extreme sensory deprivation and sensory overload, violent shaking, striking, sexual humiliation, prolonged isolation, prolonged sleep deprivation, threats of harm to individuals and to their family and friends, among others.
The Third Geneva Convention states, "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." The issue of dual loyalty--the need for military doctors to follow orders and also to be bound by principles of medical ethics--was clearly dealt with in this and other international treaties, including the Nuremberg tribunals in which "orders are orders" was not a valid defense by military personnel against war crimes.
According to several sources, including a recent report, "Leave No Marks," by Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First, increasing evidence indicates that physicians and other health professionals, including psychologists, have been involved in torturing detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. These activities range from participating in torture, watching it behind one-way mirrors, patching wounds, treating collapsed prisoners, turning over medical records to interrogators, and covering up and even falsifying deaths due to torture so they appeared to be from natural causes. Dr. David Auch, commander of the medical unit that staffed Abu Ghraib during the time of the abuses made notorious by soldiers' photographs, said military intelligence personnel told his medics and physician assistants not to discuss deaths that occurred in detention.
Psychologists may advise interrogators on how best to exploit fears and weaknesses in those that they are torturing. I was disappointed that the American Psychological Association (APA) did not pass a proposed moratorium earlier this year banning psychologists from being involved in coercive interrogations. According to Dr. Miles, "[The APA] very specifically stated that physicians or psychologists could work in secret prisons with an option of leaving if they wanted, but not with an obligation to call attention to the abuses within secret prisons."
As Douglas Johnson said during a recent interview, "I think it's important to understand that in today's world there are more health-care professionals involved in the design and structuring of torture than there are those who are involved in providing care for survivors of torture around the world."
If we're not careful, we become that which we most fear. When we torture people, even if we win the battle, we've already lost the war for hearts and minds. Especially our own.
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Member Comments
Posted By: suburbdweller @ 04/05/2008 12:16:09 PM
Comment: Correction: A quick internet search reveals that roughly 110,000-120,000 Japanese Americans were interred by the United States during WWII (not millions as I stated earlier). Perhaps two thirds of those were American citizens.
Posted By: suburbdweller @ 04/05/2008 12:03:18 PM
Comment: For a nation proud of its institutions of fairness and justice, it is unthinkable that Americans would exact, much less allow to be commonplace, acts of cruelty in her name. And yet, justified by fear and bigotry, we have found it easy to do just that. Again. How? Through the use of labels.
By labeling someone an Islamic extremist or a terrorist these days, one can be instantly demoted from the ranks of those worthy of due process, habeus corpus, presumed innocence. Rightfully so? Perhaps. But how do you know someone is a terrorist? And how many Americans take that a step further? Watch in amazement at how easily Americans have been suckered into agreeing, with a wink and a nod, that the labels "Arab" and "Muslim" really are synonymous with "terrorist" and thus worthy of the same aforementioned demotion.
Could one argue that torture is justified to thwart an imminent threat? Perhaps, but such scenarios are rare and short lived---quite possibly no one at Guantanamo ever possessed knowledge worthy of stirring the debate.
Guantanamo prison is a huge, self-inflicted black eye on the image of a supposedly kinder & gentler nation. Yet it continues to operate, as it has for years now, fueled by the labelmakers in the White House, supported by all those other "conservative" Americans, all of whom will insist to their dying breath that their cause justifies the means, just like those who happily and in clear conscience canceled the rights and stripped away the property of an entire ethnic group of its fellow countrymen a few decades ago, taking them from their homes and putting them in concentration camps for no reason other than their heritage.
I'm not referring to the Holocaust. I'm referring to the internment of millions of Japanese Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor.
Most Americans (not all) look back at those events and shake their heads in shame that we were capable of such acts. And yet today, at this very moment, our government is lashing out with the same blind fervor prevalent during WWII. Will we wait again until a new generation has emerged before we see the shamefulness of our current deeds?
Posted By: burbank @ 04/05/2008 4:47:53 AM
Comment: Could torture be looked at another way? Not to be used as a means to obtain information about suspected enemy action, but rather as a means to exact revenge on an unseen and untouchable foe. Consider the actions of a sociopathic lust killer. In the highly evolved fantasy world in which he lives, he has total control over the various acts played out over and over again in his mind. After enough time has pased, he will ultimately act out those fantasies much to the detriment of the object of his desire. He does not go after the cause of his anger and fustration, but after a surrogate. Could this, then, explain the motive for torture? We cannot get Bin Laden, but we can get his minions. In trying to exact information, we exact revenge on a man that we cannot see or touch. And in doing so collect payment that is due on atrocities that have been committed against the innocent.