IN THE NEWS
In case you don't have the link, or hadn't heard about the article, here is Robert Jay Lifton's article, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. Lifton argues that, based on the available evidence, there's every reason to believe that American doctors attended the torture sessions at Abu Ghraib and other facilities.
Frankly, it would be surprising in the extreme if doctors had not participated. In nearly all cases of torture worldwide, doctors monitor the victim, look for signs of extreme distress, and generally advise the interrogators how far they can push the infliction of extreme pain. The US military doctors involved also apparently acted as a conduit for private medical information about the detainees, so that interrogators could find personal details they could use to further break down the prisoners' resistance. Don't say, "It can't get any worse," because it can: there's also evidence that doctors falsified death certificates for prisoners who died in custody.
I'm always ready to maintain some shadow of doubt about allegations this dreadful. However, I can't find fault with Lifton's conclusions. If you're serious about torture, you employ a doctor as part of the interrogation team. Ask anyone in Amnesty International--you know, the people who were up in arms about the Iraqi Baath Party's torture chambers, rape rooms, and widespread executions of people even mildly supected of political dissent, long before the Bush-Cheney crowd discovered their disgust for Saddam Hussein. Or, more to the point, Amnesty International members were working to bring attention to the fate of Iraqis imprisoned, tortured, or killed while the Reagan Administration was providing material assistance to the Iraqi regime.
Sorry for the outburst. I've just heard one person too many say, "How can you criticize the conduct of this war? What about the suffering Iraqis?" As is true of many dedicated Amnesty volunteers, I've known about Saddam Hussein's crimes for a long, long time. As deserving as the Baathist regime was of its fate, it matters how we removed it--measured by both the nature (torture or not?) and the consequences (enough troops to keep the peace, or not?) of our actions. We can't afford to be egregiously sloppy willfully blind on either account--and neither can the Iraqis.
(In case you've never read it, here's a link to Lifton's book, The Nazi Doctors, which grapples with the question, How could German doctors have participated in torture and murder?)
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