Saddam's Surgeons: First, Do Harm

Washington Post ^ | 06/08/03 | Maryam Elahi and Adam Kushner

[Pokey78]

For most people, it's unimaginable to think of physicians assuming the role of torturers and executioners. Yet under Saddam Hussein this is what took place. Whether the complicity was forced or voluntary, physicians participated for years in the state's apparatus of cruelty and terror. As researchers for Physicians for Human Rights in Iraq, we spoke to many doctors who reported on complicity in these heinous acts. The state wanted them to have "dirty hands," said one senior surgeon, who told us that they acted on a government mandate ordering all surgeons to participate in cutting off the ears and branding the foreheads of army deserters. In one hospital, all surgeons -- general, orthopedic, plastic, cardiac and neurosurgeons -- were reportedly required to perform the mutilation.

[Frank_2001]

Or a "femi-Nazi"!!!!

[Dr. Frank fan]

I reckon it's bollocks, because you don't need a doctor to cut someone's ears off.

That's not an argument for anything.

This stuff either happened or it didn't. Whether or not you think Hussein's regime "need[ed] a doctor" to do these things has no bearing on whether or not they did, actually, do these things.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Bollocks? No. Entirely within character.

Tales of Saddam's Brutality

Our military knew what could happen to PFC Lynch in one of Saddam's hospitals.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

bttt