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

Propublica:

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].

Read the whole story: Propublica

Comments

[joebloe]

06:49 PM on 04/19/2009

And I didn't really rob that bank because there was a guard who watched me do it.

[longtimegone]

03:10 AM on 04/19/2009

"Chalk dust on my cleats".....When the American male reaches for a sports metaphor to explain or justify himself, look out; you're headed for a very narrow place.

[DaveyDavey]

08:07 PM on 04/18/2009

And that crater your car disappears into isn't really a pothole if a road crew watches you do it.

[wadenelson1]

07:59 PM on 04/18/2009

Here's hoping George W. Bush, John Yoo, and the rest find themselves in good company with Joseph Mengele -- in hell.

[plages]

07:22 PM on 04/18/2009

As in Dr. Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death!

[bubbuh]

07:15 PM on 04/18/2009

The following physician's would like to thank Dubya and company for recognizing the essentially humanitarian nature of their work::
* Aribert Heim, Austrian doctor and one of the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals
* Josef Mengele, German doctor and also an infamous Nazi war criminal,
* Jayant Patel, US and India trained doctor who deaths of many patients in Queensland, Australia
* Harold Shipman, British general practitioner and most prolific serial killer in British history
* Ayman al-Zawahiri Egyptian doctor, and prominent member Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda
* Wouter Basson, South African cardiologist and head of the S.A's secret chemical and
biological warfare project known as Project Coast, during the Apartheid era
* The Japanese medical personnel who were part of Unit 731 who participated in the torture killings
of 10,000 Chinese, Russian, American and other prisoners as well as Allied POWs during WWII
* The Physicians of the Soviet mental hospitals, used to hold political prisoners
* The physicans of the "Pisaot menuh" ("Human Experiments") were performed on political
prisoners held at the infamous prison Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh under the Khmer Rouge.
^ The Lake Alice, New Zealand atrocity and the many similar government programs in which
children admitted to the Lake Alice Hospital's open child and adolescent unit were routinely
punished with unmodified electroconvulsive treatment. Some governments (e.g. Norway and New
Zealand) have since begun paying reparations to patients who suffered such treatments

[breakingpoint]

07:01 PM on 04/18/2009

Which Doctor, Mengele?

[redhead61]

07:18 PM on 04/18/2009

That is exactly how these so called 'Dr''s should be viewed. Including the psychiatric doctors who were there complicit in these horrors.
If they are not held accountable, how can any other country count on our system of justice, our word means nothing, and the Geneva convention is not worth a thing. OUR soldiers will pay a price for these idiots at the top levels of government who made it ok to break these treaties and torture people in the name of protecting this country. It was JUST as unconscionable and evil as those terrorists on 9/11, Bin Laden, and other atrocious villains of our past like the Nazi's.

[dwillisno1]

06:30 PM on 04/18/2009

What bothers me, is where did they find doctors willing to do this s*it?

[bubbuh]

07:27 PM on 04/18/2009

Ethics is not a requirementt for medical personnel.

[partyofone]

09:45 PM on 04/18/2009

Ethics may not be "required" but society for CENTURIES has expected the highest ethical standards from its physicians, as embodied in the traditional Hippocratic Oath. There is, of course, a big difference between what is legal and what is ethical, particularly when a corrupt Congress whose influence is for sell, makes the laws.

I agree with dwillisno1, it is surprising that a physician concerned with human life, and above all else "doing no harm" would be a party to it.

[brandnewstuff]

06:28 PM on 04/18/2009

5 million Orphans is what GWB created- that is not including the Americans dead in his false Intel WAR- The Iraqis killed or the people Totured- SHAME OBAMA NOW! PROSECUTE BUSH AND CO - PROSECUTE!!!!!

[NotYouAgain]

06:23 PM on 04/18/2009

So there was no torture at Aushwitz became Dr. Joseph Mengele was attending the procedings, eh?

Even if we don't prosecute the technicians for the deeds they did, we should at least consider releasing the names of the doctors and having their medical licenses pulled.

[CarmanK]

06:01 PM on 04/18/2009

President Obama has made it clear, if the American people want justice, then they are to target the White House and Justice Dept stooges who laid the foundation for torture and gave the orders. No more scapegoating of low lying fruit. Unlike Abu Ghraib, the real culprits of the torture policies of the US must take responsibility and suffer the consequences. No more sacrificial lambs. and I think the first to go should be the sitting federal judge who is still doing harm to the American justice syste m. He needs to be disciplined by his peers and removed for unjudicial like conduct.. And then, I would look to the White House Counsel and others who really set the torture policy and provided the means to carry those policies.

[gschear]

05:42 PM on 04/18/2009

Two things the President must do. Reverse the Military Commissions Act and restore Habeas Corpus.
Try to recover what moral high ground we may have had by, at the very least, appointing a special prosecutor to investigate our use of torture. WE ARE A TORTURING NATION! This cannot stand!
And for gods sake, our President is a Constitutional Law professor and he is defending those that 'vas jest vollowing oorders" ? NUREMBURG for Christ sake!!

[gcallaghan]

05:41 PM on 04/18/2009

Ahh, Buhco.

Who else would fight a 21st century war using 15th century ,methods?

[mdharold]

05:32 PM on 04/18/2009

Is murder still murder if a doctor is present?

Is rape still rape if a doctor is present?

Is a violent crime or crime against humanity still a crime if a doctor is present?

Maybe Klaus Barbie should have kept a doctor nearby.

[brandnewstuff]

05:24 PM on 04/18/2009

I get it LAGH at The Headline BUSH SUGGESTED-- Then it is another infamous LIE