First, Do Harm
Doctors were involved with torture from the start. Can the medical profession redeem itself?
THE MEMORY OF detainee No. 173379 still haunts Andrew Duffy. The 24-year-old prisoner showed up in March 2006 among a truckload of captures at Abu Ghraib, where Duffy was stationed as a medic. His job was to treat new arrivals in an overcrowded, sweltering tent suffused with the stench of human waste and vomit. There, Duffy, then 19, handled everything from common diseases like tuberculosis to festering gunshot wounds.
But the new prisoner stood out. He was belligerent, yelling gibberish and staggering like a drunk. Having witnessed this kind of behavior before with detainees in diabetic shock, Duffy checked the man's blood-sugar level. From 70 to 140 milligrams per deciliter is normal; his read 431. The prisoner explained that Iraqi soldiers had held him for five days without his insulin. Duffy called the compound's hospital to request an immediate transfer. It was denied. Duffy's medical supervisor ordered him to just give the guy water.
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Torture Hits Home
The real secrets of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the war on terror.
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Of Waterboarding and Insects
Newly released memos show how Bush officials justified torture.
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Is the DOJ Watering Down its Report on the Torture Memos?
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Will Senate Torture Probe Target Cheney?
Did he tell Congress the truth?
He was used to this. The prison's medical officers routinely rejected medics' requests to hospitalize sick and wounded detainees; the general sentiment, Duffy says, was "screw these guys." Once, he tried to revive an elderly prisoner whose heart had stopped. The ambulance's defibrillator had the wrong pads, so Duffy attempted CPR and mouth-to-mouth. "Why did you make out with that hajji?" the hospital staffers taunted. "Why didn't you just let him die?" For the next month, he heard it around the chow hall: "That fucking medic gave that hajji CPR!"
Beyond patching up detainees, Duffy and his comrades with the 134th Medical Company of the Iowa National Guard were ordered to soften them up for interrogation. One day, Duffy and an MP restrained and hog-tied a resisting detainee—cuffing his wrists to his crossed ankles behind his back—so that Duffy could check his vital signs. Guards later boasted that they'd left the man that way for 12 hours.
Throughout Duffy's year at Abu Ghraib—long after the infamous photos were published and the Pentagon vowed that detainees were no longer abused—men were still being strapped into restraint chairs and left in the blazing sun for hours or locked in cells too small to lie down in for 24 hours at a time. The medics regularly found prisoners dehydrated, wrists bloody from overtight handcuffs, ankles swollen from forced standing, joints dislocated from stress positions. They knew to keep their written evaluations vague, never mentioning cause of injury as a standard medical report would. When they shuttled broken detainees to and from the prison's interrogation rooms, the orders were explicit: Transport only. No medical care. No paper trail. Flouting the Geneva Conventions, Duffy's platoon sergeant even ordered the medics to strip their uniforms and ambulances of the Red Cross emblems that denoted them as noncombatants. Should anyone from the Red Cross show up to see the prison, the soldiers were told, send them away and tell them nothing.
FOR MORE THAN five decades, starting with the prosecution of Nazi doctors during the Nuremberg trials—seven were sentenced to death—the Pentagon made a point of ordering its physicians to abide by international norms. The World Medical Association, which counts the American Medical Association (AMA) as a member, had issued clear directives: Doctors could not assist in torture or cruelty of any kind, and were duty bound to report abuses they witnessed. The United Nations later clarified that the rules apply to all medical personnel—from surgeon to nurse to psychologist to lowly medic. Even now, the Army's Military Medical Ethics textbook echoes the Geneva Conventions, noting that a doctor-warrior's priority is always "physician first." "They don't give up their licenses and their medical ethics when they join the military," explains George Annas, a professor of law and public health at Boston University.
But even as the nation debates disbarment for the Bush administration lawyers who green-lighted torture, the medical profession has dealt reluctantly, if at all, with its own involvement. "The indifference is shocking," says retired Army Brig. General Stephen N. Xenakis, a rare outspoken critic among military doctors. "Some civilian doctors are appalled, but many say, 'It doesn't affect my life; I'm not involved.'"
Doctors were complicit in the torture strategy from the start. In December 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued a directive allowing interrogators to withhold care in nonemergency situations—men with injuries including gunshot wounds were denied treatment as a way to make them talk. (The directive was soon revoked, but the practice continued.)
Four months later, Rumsfeld ordered that doctors had to certify prisoners "medically and operationally" suitable for torture and be present for the sessions. At Abu Ghraib, interrogations had to be preapproved by a physician and a psychiatrist. "They have the final say as to what is implemented," Colonel Thomas M. Pappas told military investigators.
The CIA received similar advice in 2002 and 2005 from the Justice Department, whose torture memos recommended that physicians and psychologists be present for the interrogation of "high value al Qaeda detainees." These doctors, the lawyers argued, would see to it that interrogators didn't torture detainees by intentionally inflicting "serious or permanent harm."
But it was in June 2005 that the Pentagon delivered its biggest ethical bombshell, a memo that allowed doctors to participate in torture and share medical records with interrogators so long as the detainee in question wasn't officially their patient. The directive's author, physician and top Pentagon health official William Winkenwerder Jr., received a prestigious award from the AMA that year for outstanding contributions "to the betterment of the public health."
Field medics like Duffy, who were still being trained to do no harm according to the military's old ethical standards, faced a rude awakening on the ground. "You have all these codes you follow as a health care worker, but then it's, 'Now we're in Iraq, forget those,'" Duffy told me.
Plenty of doctors in uniform felt similarly but, like Duffy, did as they were told. A 2007 Red Cross report indicates that CIA medical personnel presided over hundreds of waterboardings, including those of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. One Al Qaeda associate, an amputee named Walid bin Attash, told the Red Cross that health workers periodically measured the swelling in his remaining leg as he was shackled in a stress position at a CIA black site. Gitmo military doctors twice sent alleged 9/11 planner Mohammed al-Qahtani to the hospital after his heart rate fell to dangerously low levels, only to send him back to the torture chamber when he improved.
Aware of the breaches, Xenakis says, a few military physicians called for ethical reviews. But the Pentagon overruled them, and the protests ceased. "There was a blackout," he explains. Fearing for their careers, "military doctors wouldn't speak, even informally." Before long, adds M. Gregg Bloche, a Georgetown University law professor who interviewed military physicians on condition of anonymity, the Defense Department was screening doctors and deploying only those on board with the program.
DURING THE 1980s, as a symbolic show of support for doctors working under oppressive regimes, the American Medical Association enacted guidelines that forbade their participation in torture. But even when it became clear that US doctors were violating these rules, the association (which represents a quarter of a million doctors and med students nationwide) took no steps toward censuring its wayward members. Instead, in 2004, it released a statement pointing to its existing guidelines. The AMA's refusal to take a stronger stand, says Penn State bioethics professor Jonathan H. Marks, has been "a source of shame" for the profession.
What stood out for Steven H. Miles, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, was the association's resounding silence in February 2006, after the UN Commission on Human Rights condemned American doctors for having "systematically" participated in detainee abuse. "In a serious medical community, that would be a call to arms," Miles says. "But the AMA said nothing."
It wasn't until November 2006 that the association issued a statement clarifying that doctors cannot participate in interrogations of any kind. Xenakis, who helped shape the new policy, says most of the AMA's military delegates resisted the move, arguing that "the mission of getting information was greater than the medical ethics they acknowledged we were overriding." (The four military delegates contacted for this story declined to comment.)
The nation's top medical association has all but ignored the sorts of serious ethical breaches that Duffy witnessed daily—the neglect, the filthy conditions, the incomplete medical reports. Some doctors even abused detainees under the guise of treatment. Brandon Neely, who served as a guard at Guantanamo back in 2002, twice watched a Navy physician perform violent exams on new arrivals. Without lubrication, he said, the doctor "just reached back and shoved his finger as hard as he could in the rectum." His fellow MPs told him the other doctors were doing the same thing. They all heard the prisoners screaming.
On at least four occasions, doctors have petitioned AMA leaders to endorse an independent investigation of their colleagues' role in the abuses—only to be voted down. "They said, 'Look, we trust our military and we aren't going to step on their toes,'" explains Matthew Wynia, director of the association's Institute for Ethics.
None of the AMA's top officials would be interviewed for this story. When pressed on why they were so reluctant to act, even after the complicity of doctors became apparent, spokeswoman Kate Cox insisted that the association has no specific knowledge of doctors being involved in abuse or torture and that it is not equipped to conduct the sort of investigation needed to "credibly confirm" such allegations. Besides, Cox said, the AMA has fulfilled its duty simply by setting ethical standards.
But the AMA's critics worry that its half-measures have already—perhaps irreparably—damaged the moral standing of American doctors. "It has had a corrosive effect," says Xenakis. Adds Miles, "We're now in an extremely poor position to protest abuse in other countries. It will silence us as a medical community."
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What have we become?
I read these stories and I shudder at how we have slowly become what our grandparent's generation fought against in WWII. A nation of people with no moral compass. People who justify behaving in a barbaric way because the victim is "the enemy". The other.
No one wants to discipline these doctors because they were doing it "in war". The doctors treated these people inhumanely because they were part of a group Iraqi insurgents. They were insurgents because we invaded their country without provocation and ultimately allowed the country to dissolve into chaos. We invaded Iraq because...?
The senselessness of all of this. The absolute evil banality of it all. Will history mark this as the turning point of the decline of the US?
Ethics
It does, indeed, seem as though our society's ethics are on the decline. But we can still teach our kids to behave honorably, no matter what crappy role model our leaders provide. Our political system is, in many ways, morally bankrupt.
Medical ethics?
"IT'S NOT THAT the medical community lacks the tools to police itself. Doctors can't practice without a state license, and a grave breach of ethics can cost them that license."
Even in this country, the medical profession does not police itself. In my condo building lives a psychiatrist who is also a registered sex offender for the crime of assaulting a 12-year-old boy. His punishment form the state medical board: he couldn't see patients younger than 17 for one year.
MEDICAL PERSONNEL AND TORTURE
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FIRST, PROSECUTED AND THEN IMPRISONED.
SECOND, THEY SHOULD LOSE ALL CIVIL RIGHTS(like regular prisoners) AND THEIR LICENSE TO PRACTICE!
SCUM
I am appalled, this account
I am appalled, this account is horrific! It frightens me! If we have allowed our military and our medical staff the right to torture another human being, even if he is an enemy, how are we different from the Nazi's??
And who is to say that this will not happen to us as American's someday, if we are percieved as being "enemies"?
May God be with us and punish the ones that are responsible for these horrendous crimes against humanity!
Who order the records burnt?
The last sentence jumped out. Someone gave the order to burn the medical records. It seems that should be prosecutable, even if all other evidence of wrongdoing was destroyed.
http://www.ravensblog.net
Should torture doctors be punished.
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Those doctors in the military had little power to stop the treatment of prisoners. The people who should be punished are Dick Chaney, who authorized the torture, in spite of the fact that he had no authority too do so, and the rest of the Bush administration who participated in concealing the facts from Congress and the public. Cheney was the primary author of torture and ignoring the Geneva Convention. George W. was kept out of the loop as much as possible but he allowed Cheney a free hand and approved virtually everything Cheney did or said. He couldn't be bothered with the details, and felt he was allowed to do anything to "protect" the country.
The Justice department was also complicit, trying to spin torture and making it legal for them to do anything the president (Vice President really) said was OK.
I commend to you the book Angler, The Cheney Vice Presidency, by Barton Gellman. Every American should be required to read it in order to prevent such enormous abuse of power from ever happening again.
Do you really want torture docs caring for your family/friends?
Rubbish. All of those doctors had the power - and the obligation under UCMJ and international law, as well as medical ethics - to refuse criminal and illegal orders.
Primum non nocere doesn't vanish because of some pitiful uniform, much less some assholes' criminal conspiracy.
What passes for logic in your comment would also excuse HMO medical directos "ordered" to prop up megacorp's profits by denying policyholders care they require to survive.
That prospect - and reality - is every bit as obscene, criminal, and depraved as are the collective actions of America's torture docs.
I'm ashamed that the CA medical Baord has - per the article above - somehow ceded our state's lawful authority to the war criminals in the Pentagon. I despise any suggestion that my colleageus who chose to enter US miltary service are any less responsible for their war crimes than wer ethe docs the US and her Allies executed and imprisoned at Nuremberg.
They were probably just 'following orders'
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- the standard answer at Nuremberg.
I'm not sure the doctors should be prosecuted; but I am sure their superior officers should be.
Doctors supervising torture
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These doctors should have their licenses revoked ASAP
Dirty Docs
Two words: Neremberg, Geneva Conventions.
Seven doctors were put to death for their part in the war crimes of WW2.
What makes the actions of these doctors any different? If we don't recognize what has occurred recently what is keeping more such crimes from occurring again?
I never did believe in the
I never did believe in the devil until bush jr became president!!!
should Physicians be prosectued for torture
I was disgusted but not surprized. Those doctors that witheld medical attention should be held accountable. The torture of detainees should be prosecuted and their liscences withdrawn. Cheney and Bush and all others complicit SHOULD BE PROSECUTED for WAR CRIMES and an example needs to be made that we are a country that will not tolerate this facist state.
I think about WWII and the Japanese methods we were so apalled at. How are we different? If we are going to police the world we have to have due process or else we are just tyrants.
Why do you aaply the title
Why do you aaply the title DOCTOR to torturers. Is than an attempt to excuse their voluntary actions ? If you were to remove the title then you have your answer as to what action should be placed in regard to their actions.......
The "TITLE does not excuse them ?.? Does It ?.?.?
America tortures, until it stops and holds torturers accountable
That America tortures is a fact. That we allow torturing is true until we vigorously prosecute torturers or make a new strict law and publicly say we are forgiving our torturers but never allowing it again. Forgiving them would say we allowed torture, but brushing it under the table says we are not law-abiding, nor honest, nor do we seek justice.
Those of us who believe America can be a decent country once again want the issue dealt with in a forthright manner.
The doctors should be
The doctors should be prosecuted just like at the Nuremburg Trials. Their survival did not rely on survival in an ugly war where people had to do what it took to live in many cases.
What goes around
The irony of all of this is the new generation of veterans coming home needing medical and mental healthcare. They will be greeted and treated by VA doctors and technicians who have been past perpetrators and enablers of torture. They will be given jobs with the VA and other "Federal" agencies and corporations like Blackwater. So unless Citizens demand all of this be brought into the harsh light of day and until we ratify International Criminal Court and close SOA/WHINSEC we will see this behavior become even more institutionalized and its poison grow deeper into our cultural fabric. What we're seeing now is a direct response to the revisionist mythology about how Vietnam was lost and how we didn't put the dots together in seeing USSR collapse or the Beirut Bombing, the first WTC bombing, the Cole, the Embassy's and eventually 9/11. Its the same mythology that said in order to defeat godless communism we have to act as dirty as they are. Always the expedient excuse to act like enable and condone the berserker culture. Which happens whenever an Empire begins to crumble.
The Great Satan
Dr.s dont talk, not even informally....when they´re in front of God on Judgement Day they will talk... But if they worship The Great Satan (Oil Money Power) maybe they dont believe that. They will be welcomed in Hell by Dr. Mengele.
Torture in the military
As a former member of the U.S. Army Medical Corps I am appalled at the reports
of medical staff being present in situations where torture was occurring. Such
participation was unthinkable during my service time. A few years ago I dropped into the department at Triplelr AMC in Honolulu where I had served as a reservist for ten gratifying and pleasant years. A civilian physician employee of the department, who I had worked with and gotten to know well took me aside and told me that this was no longer the place it had been when I had been assigned there. He reported that the administration had become hard and unresponsive to the needs of the department and he indicated he was retiring because he could no longer enjoy working there. It appeared that the Iraq war had changed things beyond recognition. At the time I was puzzled but now realize what had been going on.
Color me surprised
The AMA has been promoting the torture of Americans via its entrenched medical errors for decades. Moving into outright torture isn't all that large a step.
This scenario kind of feels like that experiment back in the... 60's?... to see how far people would go, being told by an authority to keep pushing a button, and every time the button is pressed someone somewhere screams out in agony... The new experiement: how willing are doctors to violate basic ethics? Let's get them in on the torture racket and find out!
Medics and Torture ...
"What have we become?" pretty well captures my dismay.
That said, combat medics do not have to be M.D.-physicians.
(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_medic).
Medics can have diverse backgrounds and training. Often they perform with incredible heroism and distinction.
As a retired M.D. physician, I wish that my professional group would maintain higher ethical standards for having gone through medical school and residency training; but we all know there are rotten apples in everybody's barrel and skeletons in everyone's closet.
We all must be vigilant; look out for the rogue practitioners who break their compact with those whom they are trusted to serve and insist that transgressors be punished and denied the right to practice if they do not mend their ways.
In all humility, I don't know how I would have performed had I been assigned to Abu Gharib, Gitmo, or one of the secret rendition sites. I do know that we must insist on better from ourselves and our Countrymen if America is to remain the moral leader it has been.
On being in that situation
I understand a bit about what Phil Zimbardo (of the Stanford Prison Experiment) calls "Situational Dynamics," but my mother is also a retired physician. I cannot, in a million years, imagine she would follow anyone's orders to withhold critical care or bear witness to torture, let alone enable it. While the pressure to conform must be unimaginable over there, doctors have a unique ethical platform from which they should feel empowered to raise a collective middle finger to an order that directly goes against the moral core of their training.
Michael Mechanic is a senior editor at Mother Jones.
Torture doctors.
After having read this article,my stomach churns. These people are no better than the ones tried at Nuremberg. A bankrupt culture on its last legs indeed. Before things totally degenerate, I sincerely hope that President Obama will have the guts to prosecute the Cheney/Bush minions, or at least shine the light of day on all that took place in American prisons during the assorted wars of recent years,bringing the perpetrators and their leaders to account and above all resetting the moral compass of America. As for the AMA redeeming itself,we see all too often the results of doctors being in the pay of the pharmaceutical and agri-business industries not to mention the military. Perhaps a new organization with freshly restated,enforceable, ethical standards would be in order.
Media Hypocrisy
I wonder if you were this aggressive in researching the torture and murder of our soldiers by these same terrorists? The hypocrisy of the media is so evident.
Can't Beat Em, Join Em?
Hmmm. I wonder if this reporter looked into these mens torture and murder history too... And if they WERE murderers and torturers, then I guess it makes perfect sense to murder and torture them too.
Let me guess, you also like to rape rapists?
We are supposed to be the "moral authority," and as such, torture and murder shouldn't really be on our "to do" list.
The majority of intelligence experts agree that torture has no place in intel gathering (and yes, as a matter of fact, I do know people inside the intel community that tell me the same thing)
In fact, I don't even know why I bother replying to this drivel. Comments like this from Media Hypocracy are like small piles of crap left by some passing dog. Annoying, stupid, worthless.
Submitted by Big Red (not
Submitted by Big Red (not verified) on July 17, 2009 - 4:27am.
I wonder if you were this aggressive in researching the torture and murder of our soldiers by these same terrorists? The hypocrisy of the media
Media hypocrisy?????? We are the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA....we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We do NOT torture prisoners REGARDLESS of what the enemy does to our soldiers. We do NOT deny medical care to prisoners REGARDLESS of how are soldiers are treated in captivity. That is what sets us apart...gives us the moral high ground. If we do the same things the enemy does then WE ARE THE ENEMY! Media hypocrisy????? I think NOT. Perhaps YOU have FORGOTTEN the things that makes this country a great country, but at least this media person has not. That our country has as a rule treated captured combatants with all the dignity and care a human being deserves has often saved our soldiers worse treatment when our soldiers are captured. That we tried to live by our standards even in the depths of war earned us respect around the world. Bush and his cronies have destroyed in 8 short years the respect it took over 200 years to earn. Damn them all to hell for what they have done to our country.
first, do harm
If Duffy's complaints were buried and he is now--as I believe--a civilian, he should give the MO's name to the media. Shame the bastard!
Basically, no one in authority _wants_ to do anything
The post-Nuremberg refinement is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission but that term has been bastardized into service as a pleasant-sounding synonym for a typical congressional committee (presumably closed). In a true TRC, pardon _may_ be granted on full and public detailed confession of all criminal actions. In general, one would expect prosecution of the instigators and perhaps some of the most enthusiastic participants. It is the compromise that doesn't ruin the lives of everyone following orders and the lives of their families.
One can argue that there is no precedent in Anglo-American law for such an institution, and I'm not an attorney, but it is my understanding that penalties do not automatically follow from a war crimes conviction. Therefore, it should be possible to offer the selective leniency of a TRC within war crimes laws. If nothing else, perhaps presidential pardons for the repentant little fish. But nobody in authority cares enough to open this can of worms. "Let's just hope it all goes away and doesn't set the stage for nightmares in the future." Like the Ford pardon of Nixon.
"First do no Harm"
So this is where the VA hires it's doctors and shrinks from the active military where they have honed their skills and lack of caring and empathy. Some of these docs must know that by burning records they screw the soldier when they try to file a claim with the VA.
Do No Harm Torture at ABu Gharaib
Hello:
As a US military officer (former) for 5 1/2 years of my 9 years of service I was authorized to hold military members accountable under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. And I did my duty as required, fairly, equitably, but what I witnessed was the US senior Air Force military senior commanders (Wing Commanders, Vice Commanders, Inspector Generals, Selective Leaders throughout various positions) on bases who were corrupt as a combination of the Mafia, KKK, and a religious cult, and would lie to your face like the Catholic Church about not raping boys, men or women. Yes, all these things applied to the US Air Force and after 16 years of speaking with men and women, spouses and adult children of military officers to include a generals daughter...it is all the same. Outright whole sale rapes, forced abortions by military doctors after women were drugged, and gang raped. The mis-use and embesslement of taxpayers money for what they said was a "golf outing" more likely a sex party. I have witnessed and ordered to get buses for military men after a night of trafficking women in Northern England while on temporary duty against US military laws. I have witnessed and seen numerous military leaders refused to deal with child rapists on their base such a General Santerelli (then Colonel) on Spangdahlem AB, Germany in approx. 1988 - as 3 white enlisted men who were raping their step daughters were identified they were released back to their homes to continue these crimes. One name that was discussed was MSgt Mowery of the 52 Componet Repair Squadron I specifically knew him he was in my former unit. I always had a bad feeling about him but never knew what it was. At the time of the 3 child rapists being released I found it odd since I was prosecuting a man in my unit and the Air Force was prosecuting him, the only differences...he was black and his step daughter was white. I believe he was being prosecuted because yes, he was black and he was raping a white girl. Racial prejudice is alive and well in the US military. I myself am a multiple rape survivor of the US military, 2 times by military doctors during exams...most likely now civilian doctors. Any no one helped me. Not even Congress wants to see all the documentation the US government has been circulating for years that has allowed for the rape, abuse, and murder of foreign citizens of Iraq or our own military women and men being murdered by our own and the US military calls in suicide or a friendly fire!!! There is nothing friendly about these cases, these actions are treasonious by and under the UCMJ (military laws), which is breaking down the very basic unit trust in leadership and command chain.
The United States and US Military’s Sanctioned Use of Sexual Abuses, Violence, Rape and Murder.
U.S. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf stated the week of March 18th, 2002 as a consultant on the war in response to the Iraqi's who were killed fleeing back from Kuwait on the highway of death "they were rapist, murders and thugs!"
U.S. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf to West Point Cadets 1991
“some of the best leadership lessons I have ever learned have been taught by dumb officers, absolutely morally bankrupt officers who had no redeeming qualities, in many cases, you learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership because you learn how not to do it."
And U.S. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf went to US Army Academy - West Point !!!!! Not much different at the Air Force Academy no officer or cadet ever charged with the rapes at this institution or rarely at the Naval Academy...now two Navy officers want a Presidential Pardon for a convicted Navy cadet who raped a female cadet.
I will gladly provide you with the documents I am speaking of: the FBI and US Pentagon developed Rape Checklist utilized for 40 years, and taught in civilian cities across this country to through out rape victims testimony. I will gladly provide the US Congressional Testimony on US Children Raped and this checklist brought to share to the chairmen Sen Arlon Spector (1985). I will gladly share the signed letter by numerous US Congresspersons on Rumsfeld failing to take any actions on the rape of military women even after (in the letter noting 22 past Sex Abuse Task Forces).
No one in DC wants to have these cases be heard on national TV, no one in DC really wants to have the American Public become aware of how many men, women, children and spouses, civilians and foreigners have been raped, beaten and murdered by the US. It would not only be shocking but Americans who be embarrassed as a nation for handing over their individual power to morons and pedophile and rapist supporters in Congress. Why will no one bring to trial those who they knew 45 years ago of these abuses at Abu Gharaib. I was in DC when a staffers told me of the Abu Gharaib rape videos were being classified by DoD and soem Congressmembers. In 2007 I was shut down by under Sec of the DoD Chu after I told him of 5 immunity laws that have now allowed 6 US military women to be raped, abused, sexually harassed and 3 killed, as their assailants get immunity, promotions and go on to rape, harm and kill others. These laws aren't on the military books but on the US Congressional books that keep military after exhausting their own chains of command to the President of the US (a must but no one tells you0 BEFORE you can take your case to the US court system. I did this and the US Justice System stepped in to represent my assailants in a court of law, at the appeals hearing in Cinn, OH the Justice Department attorney's stated I could not bring my case for "National security reasons, it would be a disruption of good order, morale and discipline." I was sexually accosted for a year by two senior officers in the US military complaint system..I was ordered to not go to the Generals for help, and I was denied any assistance in the military as they covered up the fraud, theft of money, refusal to help abused children, spouses on base and these actions resulted in placing a military spouse in prison for saving her daughters from being re-raped by her military husband..Major Frank Eng, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 1992, case retried by Sharon Ovingtoin who got the wife out of prison on battered women syndrome. Mrs Eng had been raped as a former enlisted woman in the Air Force, she married Frank Eng, a Chinese nation turned American who got to be a missile launch officer, and then a highly classified security clearance in the labs of Ohio. But, Frank Eng raped, beat and pulled the trigger of his gun against his families head most often. Cynthia reported many times and no one did anything in the military to help her. After seeking a divorce, Major Eng against base orders came to get a daughter he'd been raping for years, and his estranged wife shot him 5 times after she snapped. The US Air Force refused to hand over to her attorney Mr. Stone all the documents on the domestic abuse and crimes against the family. Instead the local prosecutor sent her to prison for 3 1/2 years and gave her kids to her husbands family. Mrs. Eng got a second trial when Ovington who represented one of my assailants read my 236 page document about the crimes and abuses happening at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Mrs. Eng told me this when she was released but despite the courts expunging her case, when she went to the Dayton VA to get her disability as a military rape victim...she was refused and told you murdered a military member.
Please contact me....at 602.374.7375 Phoenix, Arizona.
We need separation of genders in the military in all areas just like the Tuskeegee Airman and we need an Independent Investigative Agency. I have the plan and it would not cost the US taxpayer one cent.
We need prosecutions of the RAPIST SUPPORTERS of these rape lists, and identify all cities it was taught in throughout America.
Rev. Dorothy Mackey,
STAAAMP Exec Director
Phoenix: 602.374.7375
US military member survivor of torture and rape
Advocate and Speaker
My case went to US Supreme Court and Assailants got Immunity
Rev. Dorothy Mackey
Becoming monsters to beat monsters...
If you read at all about Saddam, and presuming that accounts on the Internets are even halfway accurate, Saddam was a grade-A S.O.B. He idolized Stalin, put his own people to death, his brother had a rape camp, it was BAD for the Iraqi citizens under his regime.
What was questionable about the whole thing was that Rumsfeld was friends with Saddam during some of the same years when they were fighting with Iran, when people were being gassed to death, so forth and so on. I find that part of the whole thing questionable, I find the entire episode with oil-for-food questionable, I think that Saddam was the kind of person who could not be reasoned with, and I think they can still keep the guy's picture around so he can be poster child for energy independence.
I read some about Abu Ghraib, I also read that some of the officers and soldiers there received punishment for their actions, which I believe is just and appropriate, I also believe that people aren't perfect, and when you put people into a situation where they're dealing with people with murder in their eyes, there's no real telling what's going to happen.
One thing is for sure, though, as long as there are other countries that have dictators, and warlike abilities and leanings, we're going to have to have a military, so here's a chance to use all of this as a learning opportunity to do better next time, if/when there is a next time.
I think the Conventions should stand, and should be followed. In the event they are not, then the responsible parties should be called on the carpet and held to account.
I also believe that money has a lot to do with every aspect of all of this that we have read about, which is why I am a strong supporter of alternative energy, because the petroleum has been an object of contention ever since the 1960's-1970s, and as long as we are dependent on it, chances are our military will have to be Over There, somewhere, and the sooner we can leave it be, the better off we'll be, and this country won't be in the unenviable position of having to do business with people like Hussein out of necessity ever again, and with any luck, we'll never see another Abu Ghraib or a My Lai or another Fallujah, matter of fact, war is hell, no one should have to fight wars, so if our scientists and industrialists and politicians and so forth can do anything to get things moving in ways that'll help prevent one, I'm all for it. But, we don't need people in OUR military trying to channel Nazi prison camp guards to accomplish that. No brownshirts, no skinheads, no heel-snapping, no beatings, no torture, none of that.
Klaatu Marachas Necktie
Justine Sharrock writes that
Justine Sharrock writes that William Winkenwerder Jr authored the memo allowing doctors to participate in torture as long as the detainee wasn't their patient. Wikipdia has a glowing, gushing article on Winkenwerder that apparently, needs additional info. Seems to me there needs to be more documentation on this memo, perhaps, to adequately edit this Wiki entry.
A modest proposal Perhaps
A modest proposal
Perhaps those involved in Iraqi war crimes should simply be turned over to the Iraqi criminal justice system, now there's a thought!
my opinion
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*shudders*"Just following
*shudders*"Just following orders"is a crock of shit.What they did,what members of the medical and psychiatric community participated in, at Abu Gharib and Gitmo,makes them no better than "Doctor"Joseph Menagle and his vile minions.
I wonder if, they learned to shut their consciences off, as part of some program in Med.school?Or did they do it, for the money and/or the chance to play God?
