Yesterday, Democracy Now! presented a riveting interview with Dr. Steven Miles, a medical ethicist, about the involvement of medical professionals in the purported "war on terror". I encourage people to click on the link and read the transcript of the interview in its entirety, but here are some disturbing excerpts which bring to mind Hannah Arendt's famous insight about the banality of evil, the tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without critically thinking about the results of their action or inaction:

DR. STEVEN MILES: Well, one of the most famous pictures from Abu Ghraib, of course, is the body of Monadel Jamadi wrapped in ice. He was arrested at his home and put up a fight. He was then bound. He was flipped into a Humvee. He was kicked and beaten and hit with a rifle butt while he was transported to Camp Jenny Pozzi, just outside of Baghdad. There, a medic was in the room, as he was saying, “I can't breathe. I feel like I'm going to die.” He was interrogated briefly at Camp Jenny Pozzi. At that point, he was taken to Abu Ghraib.

He was admitted to Abu Ghraib in the early hours of the morning. He was admitted as a CIA ghost prisoner. Now, what this meant was that he was not given the customary medical enrollment. In fact, he wasn’t registered in the prison at all.

He was naked. He was cold. He was complaining of shortness of breath. His head was in a sandbag, and then he was tied to -- his wrists were tied together behind his back and then lifted up and tied to a window bar behind him, so that if he sank down, that his shoulders would be wrenched. And, in fact, about an hour later, he did sink down. Now, keep in mind the man was in a sandbag over his head, and he was found to have died.

Now, at that point the army did an autopsy, but the autopsy was concealed, as was the death certificate. It did find that he died of torture. And, in fact, the first time we learned of this case was about six months after it happened. By concealing this, what the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the Defense Department did was, they delayed public knowledge of a profound problem inside the prisons and essentially disabled an early warning system about torture.

Apparently psychiatrists and psychologists have, in some instances, been willing participants in the application of brutal torture techniques:

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Gerald Koocher, President of the American Psychological Association a few weeks ago on Democracy Now! The New York Times wrote a piece a few weeks ago saying that the military is turning away from psychiatrists, because of their policy that they should not be involved with interrogations, and is now relying on psychologists. You heard what Dr. Gerald Koocher had to say. There’s a growing movement within the American Psychological Association for psychologists to withhold dues from the American Psychological Association, to withdraw from the APA, and the question of whether there will be a resolution put forward that says “no involvement in interrogation.” What is your response to Koocher and that?

DR. STEVEN MILES: Well, I think that it’s interesting that Koocher talks about the psychologists who did resist the abuses and then says that the ones who participated have to be APA members, or something like that. But there actually is a well-known name, a psychologist by the name of Leso. And Leso participated in the interrogation of a guy called Qahtani. Qahtani was subjected to an incredibly brutal and extended interrogation, which included such stupid things as running three liters of saline into his body, and then when he needed to urinate, keeping him strapped to a table so he had to pee on himself. And then also he was chilled with an air conditioner to the point where his heart actually slowed down. He was hospitalized, and then he was brought out to be interrogated some more after he was re-warmed, and then he was chilled again, and his heart again slowed down.

In addition to that there was a whole set of degrading psychological techniques applied to him, and it appears that this Leso was directly involved in the oversight of that. The complete interrogation log is available on the Time website.

So, the problem -- overall problem, though, is that American medicine was entirely caught off guard by the American military involvement in brutal treatment. This does represent a break in terms of our treatment of POWs compared to World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War I. And the AMA and the American Psychiatric Association have come out with very good standards, but the problem is they waited four years to do so.

Meanwhile, in other news, the Washington Post reports that the US military is investigating a case involving soldiers who may have raped an Iraqi woman, and then killed her and three other family members. As you might have guessed: The four soldiers involved, from the 502nd Infantry Regiment, attempted to burn the family's home to the ground and blamed insurgents for the carnage, according to a military official familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was providing details not released publicly.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Culture, American Empire, Guantanamo, Iraqi Deaths, Sadomasochism