Will Guantanamo Psychologists Lose Their Credentials?

Mother Jones:

If their aim was to break him, his interrogators apparently succeeded. By late November 2002, Mohammed al-Qahtani--a suspected Al Qaeda operative sometimes described as the 20th hijacker--was hearing voices, talking to imaginary people, and spending hours on end cowering in a corner of his Guantanamo cell with a sheet draped over him.

...

The role of doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists in interrogations has been a source of considerable controversy, since it seemingly violates the medical professions' central tenet: "Do no harm."

Over the years, a handful of efforts to hold caregivers accountable for complicity in detainee abuse have come up empty. But human rights advocates are hoping this track record will soon change.

Read the whole story: Mother Jones

Comments

[Marnie1]

08:07 PM on 07/08/2010

The certainly should be decertified and prevente from working in any medical field.
Any person in the medical field who deliberately causes harm to a person under their medical care should loose their professional accreditation.
And any person in the medical field knows that from their first day of class or of training. It is a mantra of the profession. Granting so are things like privacy many other areas of medical declipine. But you never ever for any reason set out to harm a person under your care.

[blukazoo]

06:01 PM on 07/08/2010

Nothing will happen to them, but it should. They chose to do some terrible things and I don't think it matters that they thought it was for a good cause. I'm sure Joseph Mengala thought he was doing stuff for a good reason.

[Chris3131]

04:43 PM on 07/08/2010

Wait a second, I thought Obama closed GITMO. Oh, right, that was just another broken promise to go along with the repeal of DADT and fixing the economy.

[Marnie1]

08:09 PM on 07/08/2010

His Bush Lite approach is gaining a lot of calories as time goes on.

[Thor Larson]

03:05 PM on 07/08/2010

Didn't Obama promise to close that place... it must be closed then, right?

[rawresolve]

11:32 AM on 07/08/2010

Unfortunately we would need law and justice to make a comeback as an American value for any accountability for these folks.

Since the United Stated is now Plutocracy/Oligarchy I don't have a lot of hope that the 1% club and their unethically minions will receive anything but (hopefully) karmic justice.

[IfIonlyknew]

11:16 AM on 07/08/2010

WHEN WILL BUSH & CHENEY BE CHARGED FOR THIS!!!!

[pene]

11:14 AM on 07/08/2010

I certainly don't know if they will or not but, based upon the evidence now in the public domain, they should. One cannot be complicit in torture, even if someone says it is OK. When you do, you compromise your "patient's" emotional well being. That usually means a ticket out of your profession.

[Andman0121]

11:07 AM on 07/08/2010

Board interview:

"Did you participate in torture at Guantanamo?"
"...umm...yes."
"Then you lose your license. NEXT!"

There. I just solved the problem if I were in office.

[Peter Noble 2]

10:54 AM on 07/08/2010

We voted as a country by a clear majority to stop using torture. However Obama is not interested in justice for those who have no clear rights and some of whom are still stuck in Gitmo.
I do not think these psychologists will face any serious threat to losing their license. Obama will make sure that yet another GWB era scandal is neatly filed away. After all no one of importance got hurt.
There should have been a war crimes tribunal set up to at least shame those who claim they were just following orders.
Within hours of a new Republican President coming in, torture will be routine. What should have happened under Obama, a clear judicial finding that following orders is still no defense; will allow psychologists to give consent to torture. This Obama seems keen to allow. He sets the tone and the license boards will most likely follow.

[sammyscout]

01:23 PM on 07/08/2010

President Obama believes that just because he is following a 'let's look forward' policy to not hold the last administration accountable, he will be given the same leeway.

Far from it, the rethuglicans will not lose the slightest opportunity to draw blood. They are fuming and just to prove, they are so united against any Obama policy, no matter how good it is for the people. They are still spinning in their heads as to how he got elected in the first place - "McCain was a shoo-in, Palin was running circles around the liberals".

Obama is betting that he can trust the enemy - a gambit he will undoubtedly lose.

[thepheonix]

10:46 AM on 07/08/2010

Those poor inmates. Obama should be prosecuted for war crimes.

[MNinWI]

01:37 PM on 07/08/2010

Where were you 6 years ago when we first heard about this? Hypocrite!

[thepheonix]

10:44 AM on 07/08/2010

I thought this place was closed? Maybe not. Another Obama lie

[MNinWI]

01:52 PM on 07/08/2010

You are an uninformed complainer. I hope you don't bother to vote because ignorance such as yours is hurting this country.

[thepheonix]

11:55 PM on 07/08/2010

No.

Actually I am informed blogger.

I am a complainer in your mind.

How dare I intrude in your "echo chamber".

And...

I will vote to remove the Marxists.

You can bank on it.

[WisdomFirst]

09:43 AM on 07/08/2010

No, I predict they will not lose their license. Why? Because it's infinitely more important for law enforcement to ticket (and then beat up) black girls crossing the street illegally; to taser students asking impertinent questions of elected officials; to man free speech "zones" where citizens are coralled and "allowed" to express their rights of free speech and of assembly, sufficiently far away from the people they're protesting against; to ticket parked cars less than one minute after the meter has expired; to jail a higher proportionate number of blacks than whites for possession of weed and other drugs; and to arrest Tommy Chong and send him to prison for nine months, force him to pay a fine of $20,000, and forfeit $120,000 in assets for selling mail order bongs.

[Aquest]

09:23 AM on 07/08/2010

They might have credentials but they don't have ethics.

[Countess]

08:52 AM on 07/08/2010

A great deal of scientific and psychological research is done for the department of defense to better torture and kill people because of our permanent war mentality and numerous overseas aggressions. These Gitmo slimeballs are guilty of war crimes but so are Bush and Cheney and all the rest but there is absolutely no chance that anything will be done against them because Obama decided early on not to go after war criminals.

[blood1]

08:15 AM on 07/08/2010

Before they lose their credentials, they have to have them. First: Jenssen and Mitchell are not credentialed by the APA. Second: the released email discussions amongst psychologist about the APA's response to all the bad press was had amongst the "contributors" military psychologists, so the blue panel was essentially a whitewashing (released by ProPublica).

So a public outcry would be moot, especially since MSM downplayed the torture that was actually occurring as they bowed and scraped to the GWB Administration. The last poll I saw was the a large percentage of US Citizens seem to believe that Torture is just fine and dandy...as long as it is the USA doing the Torture. And at the same time, these individuals are interested in "taking their country back".

[TRex86]

09:15 AM on 07/08/2010

The America of today would not have supported the Nuremberg trials. We would do as we did with Saddam, organize a local kangaroo court, hold a "fair trial" and hang em all. We've spent the better part of 60 years trying to put that mistake behind us. Justice rather than retribution? Nah. As Bob Taft presciently observed about Nuremberg, it will come back on us some day. War crimes--Iraq? Crimes against humanity--Iraq again? But of course we warmed up to the task back in Vietnam and got in plenty of practice with Reagan's Mickey Mouse Wars. A pusillanimous twerp like GW Bush could only outdo his daddy in criminality.
Lifton's book on the nazi doctors begs for an update.