Psycho: Bush's Willing Medical Torturers

The Washington Post features an exposé today by Joby Warrick and Peter Finn that further illuminates the darkest recesses of the Bush administration's so-called "enhanced interrogation program." Numerous psychologists, physicians, and other health officials, the Post reports, played a key role in not only drawing up but also implementing the torture of suspected terrorists.

The Hippocratic oath says "First, do no harm." The malignant credo of these medical professionals was that they could torture up to the point of not causing permanent harm. They were not government civil servants but contract employees. They were not remotely under any compulsion to authorize torture. But whether from venality or sadism or misguided notions of protecting national security, or some combination of all three, they have forfeited the right to practice medicine. Under the guise of extracting information from alleged terrorists, they themselves sought to terrorize. They should be identified and disbarred.

As the New York Times underscores today, these measures were not only morally abhorrent, but also utterly ineffective. CIA higher-ups, for example, insisted on torturing al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah even after he already had volunteered valuable information. The brutal interrogations accomplished nothing. Which points to the real culprit--George Tenet, no doubt trying to please George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, by showing that he could act decisively to protect national security.

Cheney and his henchman David Addington were obsessed with rolling back the reforms that the Church committee, which investigated CIA abuses in the 1970s, had prompted in the intelligence services. Cowardly congressional liberals, they thought, had emasculated America's defenses. Cheney and Addington didn't believe that they were ever any abuses. So he and Bush went them one better.

President Obama, who entered Washington preaching bipartisanship, doesn't want to go prosecute the perpetrators. But the sheer degradation and incompetence of the Bush administration demands some kind of reckoning. Simply releasing the documents about its embrace of torture has further soiled Bush and Cheney's legacy. But whether that is punishment enough is another matter.

Comments

[sheilaofmiami]

The German's used doctors to do a lot of their dirty work too.

How sad that we have learned nothing from the 20th century. We are repeating a sick time in history.

The system, such as it is, needs to punish those who made the decisions to allow this. The doctors involved need to be sanctioned in some way, not sure what is best, and the shrinks, well I teach shrinks how to deal with their own dogs, so I cannot help them at all in this.

But those in control of our government need to be punished, and soon. But not by Obama. This is not part of his job.

[Teamster]

Your veiwpoints seem to be centrist and I appreciate that.

a Korean Veteran , war is only understood by the troops.

Second world war a patriot ,

FRD waited 6 to seven years of procrastintion
( while the gun emplacements were built of concreate at Normandy beach,
thousand of our gusys trained for combat against the war never reached shore )
because of the US Law bodies of record inaction ljust like today .

It is military custom for troops to face firing squad as justice for a crime of war.
NO UNIFORM IS A CRIME OF WAR .

THe adminstration work is to be admonished , however the nation should not be held
too riduicule as the administration suggests , no one apolagises for me .

A lever of use in sorid nature of acussing our military of any thing.

Combat troops survive or place their mark on the feild of battle.

expect continued comment thank you

[Joseph A. Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/its-not-torture-if-you-us_b_188942.html

Yes, I thought one of the most miserable revelations to come out of Bybee's August 1, 2002 memo was the central position that physicians and psychologists played in facilitating the torture -- it reminds me of the Dr. Joseph Mengele.

[jerrypl]

To brush aside the culpability of anyone who engaged in torture: from the medical practitioners to the low ranking soldiers to the CIA employees is a crime in itself. If the nation allows these actions to go unaccounted for, then another president, maybe more evil than Bush, would have permission to repeat what was silently allowed under Obama.

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

[hollybork]

I beg to differ with you. We have three different categories of people involved here. We have the executives like Rumsfeld, VP Cheney, Addington and Feith. They sought information and methods to use torture on prisoners, and instigated the efforts. Then we have the doctors and lawyers. They are medical and legal license holders who were involved in formulating for Cheney et.al the planned "enhacement" of interrogation which included torture. They served to supervise, rationalize legally and medically, analyze and covering up the torture for their professional advancement. Lastly we have the lowly operatives who carried this out and had no say in the matter.

The exectives involved need to be prosecuted and jailed. The professionals must face investigations of crimes by their licensing bodies, and forfeit their licenses to further practice their professions. Bybee will be impeached and removed from the 9th Circuit federal judgeship, and disbarred.

That said, we look at those men who usually take the fall in government fiascos. The CIA operatives who did the interrogating should be given immunity in exchange for the truth. Obama is both legally and morall justified to say they should not be prosecuted. We do n eed them to testify in the various hearings and investigations. They are of a different order than the professionals and the executives because they were not acting with intent or volition. They acted on orders of their managers, not freely with intent. Their status differs significantly from the executives and the professionals.

[tgriffy]

And I would beg to differ with you. Since when was "I was only following orders" a valid excuse when it comes to crimes against humanity. We did not accept that excuse when it came to the Germans, and arguably they were not acting freely with intent. Unlike the CIA and military operatives, the Germans could plausibly argue that disobeying orders likely give them and their families a ticket to the concentration camps. US operatives, on the other hand, have the right, and indeed the obligation, to refuse obeying an unlawful order. Indeed, there are several cases on record of some that refused to participate in the torture sessions. The US operatives on the ground should not be given any free passes here. If they are to receive immunity at all, it should be on the same principles that are required for any other crime.

[chaya]

As someone with a mysterious, chronic, painful illness, I know this about doctors: most are not any more intelligent that you or I, and many have only the most basic of educations. The same thing--more, in fact--goes for psychologists. When I think about how much suffering these people have caused me in my lifetime in their attempts to HEAL me, I shudder to contemplate the kind of agony they are responsible for in Gitmo. I don't believe for one minute they are actually able to determine when "permanent" damage is being done, much less when a procedure has gone on too long. Not only have they elected to ignore the provision "Do no harm," they have set themselves up as arbiters of what is or is not permanent. As such, THEY ARE FACILITATING TORTURE. They need to be identified by the government and condemned by the AMA and APA. And in between flipping burgers somewhere, they need to ask God's forgiveness for their hubris.

[TakeNoNeoConPrisoners]

One really needs to ask the question, "What would Jesus do?" "Would he sanction torure against his enemies?" Real Christians know the true answer here. Rationalization of inhumane, illegal, sadistic and cruel torture must be condemned for all those who wrote the torture memos and all those who "were just following orders like good little Nazis." No immunity here for anyone otherwise Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, only next time WORSE.

[sviolette]

Everyone involved in torture must be held accountable and prosecuted. Not only have their licenses revoked but put in jail where they belong.

[RationalityPlease]

Disbarring is for lawyers. But, you're correct, these so-called health care professionals should lose their licenses to practice. If we had their names, every citizen in the US could demand that their licensing boards revoke their licenses, and demand that every professional organization to which they belong expel them from their ranks. Every licensing board and every professional organization has a code of ethics. I am not aware of any one of them having room within their codes for something like torture.

[BottomLine2008]

Right. Got it.

So, what do you think?

>>>>Simply releasing the documents about its embrace of torture has further soiled Bush and Cheney's legacy. But whether that is punishment enough is another matter.

[jcfinley1]

What disturbs me is the continued presence of Dick Cheney who, far from his beloved Wyoming, is staying around Northern Virginia and Suburban DC Maryland. And now Michael Hayden is piping up. It seems like a bunch of actors waiting in the wings for their next appearance on stage. Where are the other members of the team? Stephen A. Cambone, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, and others. This crowd should be checked for violations of their oath of office that I feel borders on treason.

[citizensrus]

One psychoanalyst,Eric Fromm, trying to understand torture and its motivation wrote this:

"The principle of lustful and absolute control over other people or things is by no means restricted to the realm of sexual excitement. The teacher humiliating or beating or intimidating a pupil; the prison guard venting his rage by threatening or humiliating a helpless prisoner; the hospital nurse doing the same, in disguised form, to the patient who for social or physical reasons is not able to protest; the master mercilessly beating his dog when it does not perform as he wishes—these are only some examples of lustful destructiveness which is not in itself part of the sexual drive. Very often the lust for complete control shows itself in the wish to torture another person, since there is hardly any way to experience absolute control over another person more completely than by forcing him to endure pain when he has no means of fighting back or defending himself against the aggressor.
In other words, characteristic of lustful destructiveness is a sense of omnipotence, the desire to transcend the limitations of human existence even if only for a day, to feel like God, to feel that there is nothing which can resist one's power."


http://encarta.msn.com/sidebar_461511329/the_nature_of_violence_by_eric_fromm.html

[SouthernBlueBelle]

Thanks for the post.

[chaya]

Fromm was way off track. Certainly men experience sexual satisfaction in beating or torturing. It's purely biological. But the motivation is fearfulness. Fascists everywhere are terrified of bogeymen they can't see, which makes them hate. These guys thought they were doing their country a favor, fighting monsters. Of course many of the monsters were just innocent kids in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they couldn't see that through their haze of fear. The nazi prison camp guards were patriots, too--just like the CIA operatives at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

The real enemy is our dualistic religions that force us to see the world as good vs. evil, us vs. them, the hero vs. the monster.

[citizensrus]

Did you read the link I posted? Actually, your view and Fromm's are nearly identical. Fromm also wrote about torture in a book called "The Art of Love". He really does a good job in explaining the real motives behind torture, and he does not limit it to sexual ecstacy.
This is from my own memory of the book..but in his book he explains torture as the desire to 'know' the victim. As he put it, to have him reveal his 'secret'. The torturer wants to have absolute power over his victim. He wants to know what it is that makes his victim human and then he wants to dissect it piece by piece, physically, mentally, emotionally until there is nothing left..hoping to "know" what makes him tick, what his "essence" is all about. Then he wants to reconstruct him or dispose of him having discovered him after all, and finding nothing but a human being without any "secrets".
It's not about killing. Killing won't give you this. That's why there is really no comparison to torture as vengeance for Daniel Pearl or 9/11. Torture isn't about information or revenge or retribution or war. It's pure sadism and it's only motive is absolute power.

[meede]

I've said elsewhere the Torture Memo releases stops Bush et al from re-writing his & their legacy like the fairytale he/they want us to believe.

You listen to Sunday shows and you hear Perino, Carville's wife, the whole lot of them talk as if Bush was a King who did no wrong. Wish people would quite giving these talking heads a podium.

[bronceye]

Josef Mengele's legacy is being re written as a good guy who had permission from his democratically elected government who was likewise, at war. We will be forced to apologise to all the Nazis as they did nothing more than what we have done. I'm so proud to be an American as were the German people of the 40's.

[billyboil]

Exactly!
American behaviour is mirroring German behaviour in the '30's and 40's.The ordinary people know what is happening, and are chosing to ignore it.
They do so at there peril.

[italianspaniard]

You may thank ronald reagan for this mess, among others. He went on national tv in the 80"s and said that the american doctors didn't have to take the hypocritical oath anymore.
First, do no harm, second, you must treat everyone regardless of income. When was the last time you saw the oath displayed on a doctors waiting room's wall.

[petef59]

Our health-care system has been denying medical care to citizens for a few decades. Leaving people in pain without medical care just because they are poor, under-insured, or some insurance company needs more profit created a public and health-care providers with no humanity. What do expect when you remain silent about the low end of the spectrum?

[Ohioan730]

The presence of medical professionals adds a layer of creepiness to this entire debacle. What's the difference between Dr. Mengele and Dr. Gitmo? One doctor performed unspeakable medical experiments on POWs and the other monitored, encouraged and enabled interrogators to prolong and intensify simulated drowning. Water boarding is bad enough without a stoic and sadistic doctor standing by to ensure that no escape through death is possible. What a spine-chiller this is turning out to be.

[Yermammy]

Thanks, Mr. Jacob Heilbrunn. You keep up the courageous journalism, I'm going to make you a "favorite" and become a fan. Thanks for keeping this travesty up for traction and perhaps the unwashed masses will finally figure out how our last administration truly endangered our way in the world. What they did was calculated and not just bumbling. Either way, investigations are in order. Take care.