This Week's Backside Of The Bell CurveWinners!

Our Own
"We may be Nazis, but don't call us Nazis!"
Modern Mengeles
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Detainees prepare for arrival at
Guantanamo Bay's Lovely Camp Delta

Whatever happened to First Do No Harm?

Interrogators Cite Doctors' Aid at Guantánamo

By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, June 23 - Military doctors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have aided interrogators in conducting and refining coercive interrogations of detainees, including providing advice on how to increase stress levels and exploit fears, according to new, detailed accounts given by former interrogators.

The accounts, in interviews with The New York Times, come as mental health professionals are debating whether psychiatrists and psychologists at the prison camp have violated professional ethics codes. The Pentagon and mental health professionals have been examining the ethical issues involved.

The former interrogators said the military doctors' role was to advise them and their fellow interrogators on ways of increasing psychological duress on detainees, sometimes by exploiting their fears, in the hopes of making them more cooperative and willing to provide information. In one example, interrogators were told that a detainee's medical files showed he had a severe phobia of the dark and suggested ways in which that could be manipulated to induce him to cooperate.

In addition, the authors of an article published by The New England Journal of Medicine this week said their interviews with doctors who helped devise and supervise the interrogation regimen at Guantánamo showed that the program was explicitly designed to increase fear and distress among detainees as a means to obtaining intelligence.

The accounts shed light on how interrogations were conducted and raise new questions about the boundaries of medical ethics in the nation's fight against terrorism.

Here's my favorite part...

Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, declined to address the specifics in the accounts. But he suggested that the doctors advising interrogators were not covered by ethics strictures because they were not treating patients but rather were acting as behavioral scientists.

He said that while some health care personnel are responsible for "humane treatment of detainees," some medical professionals "may have other roles," like serving as behavioral scientists assessing the character of interrogation subjects. --snip--

Pentagon officials said in interviews that the practices at Guantánamo violated no ethics guidelines, and they disputed the conclusions of the medical journal's article, which was posted on the journal's Web site on Wednesday. NYTimes LINK

Nazis.

Fledgling Nazis.

A Nazi is as a Nazi does.

Nazis called dissenters traitors.

Nazis rounded up suspects and ignored due process.

Nazis tortured prisoners.

Nazis claimed that their actions were not only just, but vital.

Nazis were...

Nazis are...

Nazis.

I'm sure we'll hear the Nuremberg Defense cited...

"I was only following orders."

After all, the Abu Ghraib torturers have already used it.

I hope that we also hear (from The Nuremberg Charter)...

Article 8

The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires.

If not, we won't be fledglings anymore, will we?