Bush Memos Suggest Abuse Isn't Torture If A Doctor Is There

Bush Memos Suggest Abuse Isn't Torture If A Doctor Is There

Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden was fond of saying [1] that when it came to handling high-value terror suspects, he would play in fair territory, but with "chalk dust on my cleats." Four legal memos [2] released yesterday by the Obama administration make it clear that the referee role in CIA interrogations was played by its medical and psychological personnel.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, which authored the memos, legal approval to use waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other abusive techniques pivoted on the existence of a "system of medical and psychological monitoring" of interrogations. Medical and psychological personnel were assigned to monitor interrogations and intervene to ensure that interrogators didn't cause "serious or permanent harm" and thus violate the U.S. federal statute against torture [3].

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