WJ20K
2005-06-30 04:20:28 UTC
Jewish victims of Mengele must be turning in their graves.
Just recently Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) drew an analogy
regarding the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo with what Mengele
did to Jews in WW2. The FBI memo from which he read said that a
prisoner at Guantanamo was "subjected to extreme heat and bitter cold
among other unpleasantness." Joseph Mengele, known as "The Angel of
Death" performed such experiments on Jews and gathered lots of data.
Are the US military using that data on the Guantanamo inmates?
One wonders if the Guantanamo inmates of this kind of Mengelian
treatment would describe what they are enduring as "unpleasant."
[WJ20K]
Previous post:
One has to wonder, given what medics are doing at Guantanamo (see
NYTimes article link below) how far the Bush & Co. have gone to exploit
information that Nazi doctors obtain from hidious experiments conducted
on Jews, in order to 'cajole' Guantanamo detianees to 'cooperate'
(whether they are innocent or guilty of anything). Recall that the US
military spirited many Nazi doctors away after the collaps of the Nazi
regime. For what nefarious purposes one can only imagine. This latest
revelation must make the skin crawl of Jews. However it would come as
no surprise if it turns out that WW2 'information' is being used to
some extent in Guantanamo given that Bush & Co. regards anyone detained
there as having no rights. Bush & Co. (Prosecuter, Judge and Jury)
[WJ20K]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/politics/24gitmo.html?hp&ex=1119672...
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
Just recently Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) drew an analogy
regarding the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo with what Mengele
did to Jews in WW2. The FBI memo from which he read said that a
prisoner at Guantanamo was "subjected to extreme heat and bitter cold
among other unpleasantness." Joseph Mengele, known as "The Angel of
Death" performed such experiments on Jews and gathered lots of data.
Are the US military using that data on the Guantanamo inmates?
One wonders if the Guantanamo inmates of this kind of Mengelian
treatment would describe what they are enduring as "unpleasant."
[WJ20K]
Previous post:
One has to wonder, given what medics are doing at Guantanamo (see
NYTimes article link below) how far the Bush & Co. have gone to exploit
information that Nazi doctors obtain from hidious experiments conducted
on Jews, in order to 'cajole' Guantanamo detianees to 'cooperate'
(whether they are innocent or guilty of anything). Recall that the US
military spirited many Nazi doctors away after the collaps of the Nazi
regime. For what nefarious purposes one can only imagine. This latest
revelation must make the skin crawl of Jews. However it would come as
no surprise if it turns out that WW2 'information' is being used to
some extent in Guantanamo given that Bush & Co. regards anyone detained
there as having no rights. Bush & Co. (Prosecuter, Judge and Jury)
[WJ20K]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/politics/24gitmo.html?hp&ex=1119672...
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.
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.
The military refused to give The Times permission to interview medical
personnel at the isolated Guantánamo camp about their practices, and
the medical journal, in an article that criticized the program, did not
name the officials interviewed by its authors. The handful of former
interrogators who spoke to The Times about the practices at Guantánamo
spoke on condition of anonymity; some said they had welcomed the
doctors' help.
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.
Several ethics experts outside the military said there were serious
questions involving the conduct of the doctors, especially those in
units known as Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, BSCT,
colloquially referred to as "biscuit" teams, which advise
interrogators.
"Their purpose was to help us break them," one former interrogator told
The Times earlier this year.
The interrogator said in a more recent interview that a biscuit team
doctor, having read the medical file of a detainee, suggested that the
inmate's longing for his mother could be exploited to persuade him to
cooperate.
Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and former Army brigadier general
in the medical corps, said in an interview that "this behavior is not
consistent with our medical responsibility or any of the codes that
guide our conduct as doctors."
The use of psychologists and psychiatrists in interrogations prompted
the Pentagon to issue a policy statement last week that officials said
was supposed to ensure that doctors did not participate in unethical
behavior.
While the American Psychiatric Association has guidelines that
specifically prohibit the kinds of behaviors described by the former
interrogators for their members who are medical doctors, the rules for
psychologists are less clear.
Dr. Spencer Eth, a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College
and chairman of the ethics committee of the American Psychiatric
Association, said in an interview that there was no way that
psychiatrists at Guantánamo could ethically counsel interrogators on
ways to increase distress on detainees.
But in a statement issued in December, the American Psychological
Association said the issue of involvement of its members in "national
security endeavors" was new.
Dr. Stephen Behnke, who heads the group's ethics division, said in an
interview this week that a committee of 10 members, including some from
the military, was meeting in Washington this weekend to discuss the
issue.
Dr. Behnke emphasized that the codes did not necessarily allow
participation by psychologists in such roles, but rather that the issue
had not been dealt with directly before.
"A question has arisen that we in the profession have to address and
that is where we are now: is it ethical or is it not ethical?" he said.
Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health
matters, said the new Pentagon guidelines made clear that doctors might
not engage in unethical conduct. But in a briefing for reporters last
week, he declined to say whether the guidelines would prohibit some of
the activities described by former interrogators and others. He said
the medical personnel "were not driving the interrogations" but were
there as consultants.
The guidelines include prohibitions against doctors' participating in
abusive treatment, but they all make an exception for "lawful"
interrogations. As the military maintains that its interrogations are
lawful and that prisoners at Guantánamo are not covered by the Geneva
Conventions, those provisions would seem to allow the behavior
described by interrogators and the medical journal. The article in the
medical journal, by two researchers who interviewed doctors who worked
on the biscuit program, says, "Since late 2002, psychiatrists and
psychologists have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress,
combined with behavior-shaping rewards, to extract actionable
intelligence."
The article was written by Dr. M. Gregg Bloche, who teaches at
Georgetown University Law School and is a fellow at the Brookings
Institution, and Jonathan H. Marks, a British lawyer who is a fellow in
bioethics at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities.
Dr. Bloche said in an interview that the use of health professionals in
devising abusive interrogation strategies was unethical and led to
their involvement in violations of international law. Dr. Winkenwerder
said on Thursday that the article was "an outrageous distortion" of the
medical situation at Guantánamo, according to Reuters news agency.
The article also challenges assertions of military authorities that
they have generally maintained the confidentiality of medical records.
The Winkenwerder guidelines make it clear that detainees should have no
expectation of privacy, but that medical records may be shared with
people who are not in a medical provider relationship with the detainee
only under strict circumstances.
Dr. Bloche said such an assertion was contrary to what he had
discovered in his research. It is also in conflict with accounts of
former interrogators who previously told The Times that they were free
to examine any detainee's medical files. After April 2003, when Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tightened rules on detainee treatment, one
interrogator said the records had to be obtained through biscuit team
doctors who always obliged.
The former interrogator said the biscuit team doctors usually observed
interrogations from behind a one-way mirror, but sometimes were also in
the room with the detainee and interrogator.
U.N. Inquiry on Guantánamo
By The New York Times
UNITED NATIONS, June 23 - 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 begin its own investigation without American
assistance.
"Such requests were based on information from reliable sources of
serious allegations of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
of detainees, arbitrary detention, violations of their right to health
and their due process rights," the four, all independent authorities
who serve the United Nations as fact-finders on rights abuses, said in
a statement.
Pierre-Richard Prosper, the United States ambassador for war crimes,
said the United States had been unable to meet the fact-finders'
deadline to answer its request but intended to keep the matter open.
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.
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.
The military refused to give The Times permission to interview medical
personnel at the isolated Guantánamo camp about their practices, and
the medical journal, in an article that criticized the program, did not
name the officials interviewed by its authors. The handful of former
interrogators who spoke to The Times about the practices at Guantánamo
spoke on condition of anonymity; some said they had welcomed the
doctors' help.
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.
Several ethics experts outside the military said there were serious
questions involving the conduct of the doctors, especially those in
units known as Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, BSCT,
colloquially referred to as "biscuit" teams, which advise
interrogators.
"Their purpose was to help us break them," one former interrogator told
The Times earlier this year.
The interrogator said in a more recent interview that a biscuit team
doctor, having read the medical file of a detainee, suggested that the
inmate's longing for his mother could be exploited to persuade him to
cooperate.
Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and former Army brigadier general
in the medical corps, said in an interview that "this behavior is not
consistent with our medical responsibility or any of the codes that
guide our conduct as doctors."
The use of psychologists and psychiatrists in interrogations prompted
the Pentagon to issue a policy statement last week that officials said
was supposed to ensure that doctors did not participate in unethical
behavior.
While the American Psychiatric Association has guidelines that
specifically prohibit the kinds of behaviors described by the former
interrogators for their members who are medical doctors, the rules for
psychologists are less clear.
Dr. Spencer Eth, a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College
and chairman of the ethics committee of the American Psychiatric
Association, said in an interview that there was no way that
psychiatrists at Guantánamo could ethically counsel interrogators on
ways to increase distress on detainees.
But in a statement issued in December, the American Psychological
Association said the issue of involvement of its members in "national
security endeavors" was new.
Dr. Stephen Behnke, who heads the group's ethics division, said in an
interview this week that a committee of 10 members, including some from
the military, was meeting in Washington this weekend to discuss the
issue.
Dr. Behnke emphasized that the codes did not necessarily allow
participation by psychologists in such roles, but rather that the issue
had not been dealt with directly before.
"A question has arisen that we in the profession have to address and
that is where we are now: is it ethical or is it not ethical?" he said.
Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health
matters, said the new Pentagon guidelines made clear that doctors might
not engage in unethical conduct. But in a briefing for reporters last
week, he declined to say whether the guidelines would prohibit some of
the activities described by former interrogators and others. He said
the medical personnel "were not driving the interrogations" but were
there as consultants.
The guidelines include prohibitions against doctors' participating in
abusive treatment, but they all make an exception for "lawful"
interrogations. As the military maintains that its interrogations are
lawful and that prisoners at Guantánamo are not covered by the Geneva
Conventions, those provisions would seem to allow the behavior
described by interrogators and the medical journal. The article in the
medical journal, by two researchers who interviewed doctors who worked
on the biscuit program, says, "Since late 2002, psychiatrists and
psychologists have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress,
combined with behavior-shaping rewards, to extract actionable
intelligence."
The article was written by Dr. M. Gregg Bloche, who teaches at
Georgetown University Law School and is a fellow at the Brookings
Institution, and Jonathan H. Marks, a British lawyer who is a fellow in
bioethics at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities.
Dr. Bloche said in an interview that the use of health professionals in
devising abusive interrogation strategies was unethical and led to
their involvement in violations of international law. Dr. Winkenwerder
said on Thursday that the article was "an outrageous distortion" of the
medical situation at Guantánamo, according to Reuters news agency.
The article also challenges assertions of military authorities that
they have generally maintained the confidentiality of medical records.
The Winkenwerder guidelines make it clear that detainees should have no
expectation of privacy, but that medical records may be shared with
people who are not in a medical provider relationship with the detainee
only under strict circumstances.
Dr. Bloche said such an assertion was contrary to what he had
discovered in his research. It is also in conflict with accounts of
former interrogators who previously told The Times that they were free
to examine any detainee's medical files. After April 2003, when Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tightened rules on detainee treatment, one
interrogator said the records had to be obtained through biscuit team
doctors who always obliged.
The former interrogator said the biscuit team doctors usually observed
interrogations from behind a one-way mirror, but sometimes were also in
the room with the detainee and interrogator.
U.N. Inquiry on Guantánamo
By The New York Times
UNITED NATIONS, June 23 - 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 begin its own investigation without American
assistance.
"Such requests were based on information from reliable sources of
serious allegations of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
of detainees, arbitrary detention, violations of their right to health
and their due process rights," the four, all independent authorities
who serve the United Nations as fact-finders on rights abuses, said in
a statement.
Pierre-Richard Prosper, the United States ambassador for war crimes,
said the United States had been unable to meet the fact-finders'
deadline to answer its request but intended to keep the matter open.