Posted on 06/23/2005 7:31:56 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
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 the doctors - 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 that 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.
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. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
As the good book said, "whenever the interrogated becomes unconscious, do not get carried away and stop the questioning".
Only the good ones.
A four-member team of United Nations human rights experts accused the United States on Thursday of stalling on requests over the past three years to visit detainees at Guantánamo and said it would now begin its own investigation without American assistance.
After being ignored by saddam,china,cuba,zarqawi,the taliban, pakistan, sudan, congo, mugabe they've finally had enough. This was the straw that broke the camel's back and they're not going to take it anymore.
Tough one for the docs. Assuming that what they are being asked to do doesn't violate the military code, then I'd guess the military code trumps the medical code of ethics. As I said, that's a tough one for the doctors -- especially if push comes to shove and they risk disobeying a direct order.
People who are doing partial birth abortions worrying about stressing out a few murdering terrorists. Funny stuff.
I wonder what the stress level is for a person kneeling and about to be beheaded? I know, I know, we are better than that. Just one more example of our being forced by political correctness and the media bullies to "play nice" with butchers.
Now wait a minute, how dare you try and say that the doctors of our military, the people who are out in the &*%$ doing what they can to help the war effort are baby murderers. When you get away from the keyboard and volunteer for this country you can say something. You sir are sick and I suspect possibly a troll.
Dandy Don: "Turn out the liiiights, the party....no wait! That's torture!"
Interrogators' consultation with psychiatrists has already been widely reported, but has apparently been recycled to prolong liberal GTMO outrage.
Expect to see comparisons with Nazi death camp doctors from your favorite loony website/Illinois senator soon.
I ... DON'T ... F***ING ... CARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get the intel out of them. Squeeze them as hard as necessary by any means necessary. But GET THE INTEL!
Jeeez!
Now we can't even make them scared??? THIS IS NUTS!!!
God this pisses me off so much!
And all this because of that stalwart defender of human rights (as long as it's sufficiently anti-American) Amnesty International!
Losing my cool over this crapola.
"In addition, the authors of an article published by The New England Journal of Medicine this week said that 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 NEJM article questions the ethics of doctors participating in interrogations by revealing confidential "patient" information to interrogators, among other things.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/NEJMp058145.pdf
It should be noted that the NEJM is published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. They usually require a paid subscription to access their current content, but not this article. Not only that, they released it early (June 22, 2005), before its scheduled July 7, 2005 publication date.
Have you read the privacy statement at your pharmacy, doctor's office, or hospital lately? Check the part that reads:
National Security and Intelligence Activities or Protective Services
We may disclose your health information to authorized federal officials who are conducting national security and intelligence activities or providing protective services to the President or other important officials.
This is required by HIPAA, a law sponsored by Edward F.Kennedy that spells out the rules for disclosing medical information. (HIPAA's supposed to protect our privacy, but actually spells out so many exceptions that it becomes a charade, unless you interpret it in Orwell's Newspeak.)
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