Without conscience: Medical experimentation and torture

Xavier, that was a quite entertaining post, especially if you were being serious. It makes me wonder what you might say under torture. If you were mistaken for a terrorist and were being tortured to the point you could no longer handle the pain, would you admit to doing the goose step? Would you admit to being a big fan of the Nazi regime? If your admissions were made public, should we all believe them?
Oh, and I love your line "If the torture is going to occur, doesn't it make logical sense that we garner as much from it as possible?" Sorry, but it doesn't make sense (or even logical sense). Would you also argue if RAPE is going to occur, we should garner as much from it as possible?
Anxious to hear back from you, Xavier. Maybe you can also shed some light on why Bush felt he should ignore his presidential oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States (this is not a partisan rant, Obama is also ignoring the Constitution, but you seem to believe it was okay for Bush).

I stand a slim chance that you will publish this response simply because you are liberal, and liberalism needs to continue to hid the truth to justify its existence.

What you and your readers fail to realize is that torture is real, it happens, it has been used for thousands of years.

It will never go away.

And, if it were not for torture, you and your supporting readers would not have the freedoms you have to write this article or post a response to it.

Torture is an means to an end. It gets the information that our side needs to reduce death and destruction. PERIOD.

What part of that don't you understand?

Your article is complete distortion. The torture / information extraction as I like to call it, is going to happen regardless. For us to collect medical information regarding the results of the torture or rather, effect of the torture, well, that is quite humanitarian if you ask me.

But instead, your article is a complete distortion of WHY the data was collected. We dont torture to collect data. WE TORTURE AND COLLECT DATA WHICH IS THE BYPRODUCT OF THE TORTURE!

If the torture is going to occur, doesn't it make logical sense that we garner as much from it as possible?

But no, you liberals will turn and spin it any way you can to make it look like Bush is evil.

You and your readers may not like the fact that we torture the enemy to gain information that would otherwise lead to more American deaths. But the sooner you grow up and realize we are all big boys and girls in the world, and not everything is raisins and rainbows, the easier it will be for you to FIT INTO normal society.

Right now, you live in a fantasy world.

Grow up, Susan. Its time to come out from behind your doll house and recognize that there are things that need to happen whether you like it or not.

Xavier

I support a Truth and Reconciliation Commission because I think it's the best we can get. However, I think the Department of Justice has failed the country and would like to see the guilty parties, including the participating MDs, tried in an international court. Then the arguments, like those which appear here, could stop.

The authoress's hypocritical double standard would be laughable if it were not so damn sick.

America is best at whatever it applies itself to. If we torture people, then at least we should be the best at it, and the best in finding ways to hide and justify it. America is #1 and a beacon for the world!

Remember: it isn't whether you torture that matters - it's why you torture. Dancing on a pin gets to be fun after a while and even the soul gets callused.

Ken16 is wrong. International law prohibits waterboarding. The U.S., along with many other nations, has long regarded it as torture. Furthermore, there is a great difference, as has been noted by many psychologists, between SERE training and the waterboarding of captives. Those who have undergone SERE training know it is being done by friendly forces and that it will soon end; those in detention do not - in fact, they are told that it will not. A number of those tortured did, in fact die (although not from waterboarding), while others have, because of their torture, become mentally unstable. A number cannot be prosecuted, both because of their mental condition and the fact that information gotten from them was under torture. No information given by detainees under torture has been shown to be particularly helpful.

Participating in torture is a violation of the the vow to "do no harm." Those who participated should be immediately lose their license, and be subject to criminal prosecution. There is really no "slippery slope" here. Those who engage in, or help those who engage in torture, are walkng in the shadow of the S.S. There is no place in America for them.

People torture others with zest in 2 scenarios:
1.When they believe it is the will of God (Inquisition)
2. When they do it out of patriotic duty (Nazi Germany, current zionism in Israel, and Bush/Obama's perceived responsibility of protecting the fatherland)

Here are a dozen comments on doctors overseeing torture in action, and nobody has mentioned Josef Mengele. If the doctors reported data on which torture processes were "effective" in getting information, or on which tortures were more or less dangerous, that is medical research and should follow federal and AMA guidelines.

"Bush has admitted to waterboarding prisoners. The U.S. executed Japanese officers for the same crime after WWII."

Absolutely not! Other than the presence of water there is no similarity to what the Japanese war criminals were convicted of and the enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA. The Japanese forcibly pumped water into the stomachs of POW's, who had previously been force fed rice which expanded upon contact with water, then jumped on their swollen bodies. After purging their victims, the Japanese war criminals revived them and the process was repeated.

CIA interrogators put water soaked cloths over the faces of detainees whose heads were lowered below the rest of the body to provide the physical sensation of drowning. It is not something any of us would want to undergo. But no one has ever suffered anything beyond the immediate panic.

None of the enhanced interrogation techniques meet the legal definition of torture under either international or federal law. All interrogators underwent the enhanced interrogation techniques first hand as part of their training. So have hundreds of servicemen undergoing SERE training. No one has ever suffered lasting ill effects.

The presence of physicians was intended to offer immediate medical attention should it become necessary, and to insure that no detainee suffer serious harm, just as ambulances stand by at public events, or physicians are present during treadmill stress tests.

The attempt to turn the appropriate cautionary presence of physicians in these few instances in which enhanced interrogation was authorized into some sort of evil Dr. Mengele like experiments is hysteria and histrionics.

It is instructive that the harpies that shriek at our nation's attempt to subvert actual and serious plots to harm our nation and its people are silent in the face of genuine torture, like the sawing off of Daniel Pear's head. The myopic moral preening of Ms. Thistlewaite and her supporters is hypocrisy in the extreme.

@ TheBump- Abortion isn't torture. Fetuses aren't people.

The Patriot Act suspends the U.S. Constitution. Basically speaking the Patriot Act is a round-up law/act. A round-up law/act carries a transcending concept. Shifting and movement between parenthesized groups with no barrier between population and government inwhich causes incomprehensible/infinite authority. This is how Hitler removed dissent within his government with the Jewish round-up law/act. Once you have or about to get infinite anything you go to your infinite to finite rules on an even/same plane. Anything infinite swallows up/makes totally ineffective in its entirety/suspends anything finite on an even/same plane. So the Patriot Act suspends the U.S. Constitution, all state constitutions/charters and all law/laws. It pushes all authority at the federal level over to the executive branch then downwards to the military. The executive branch is only constitutionally in charge of the military. It is not part of the military. At the state/local level all authority is pushed downwards to state/local law enforcement. Thus placing the United States under martial law and one man rule where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in charge of the country per the Patriot Act. Since the Patriot Act is an international/domestic round-up law/act you are placing the infinite authority on an international basis. You are suspending the constitutions/charters of all countries and their laws. You are suspending the charters/constitutions of all international bodies of government and laws including the Geneva Convention thus making the torturing legal. You are placing the world under one nation government in which the U.S. is in charge all in the name of fighting terrorism. Your bigger problem here at home is the suspending of all law/laws. Anyone commiting any and all felonies and/or misdemeanors can and will argue that the crimes are legal due to the suspending of all law by the Patriot Act. The U.S. Supreme Court being the independent body of the 3 branches had and still has to break protocol to limit the damage being done by the other two branches. This is being posted as leverage to get them to do just that.

Rand Paul, Tom Coburn , Bill Frist are ruthless Republican cutthroat businessmen. Lend no aid nor comfort to enemies foreign and domestic. Iatrogenic.

Sigh . . . I'm 81 years-old. I know that I won't live to see Recovery from the Damage that Bush/Cheney/Rice/Rove/Gonzales/Feith et al. have done to the USA (where I served four years as a Naval Aviator).
The real Horror is that my Children may not live that long either. . . . especially with the likes of Limbaugh/Beck/Coulter/O'Reilly/Hannity/Rove and Gingrich spouting their poisonous LIES!

The authoress says that "Torture assaults human dignity in a profound way, both for the tortured and also for the torturer."

May we infer from this that the authoress no has resolved longer no longer to be an apologist for the abortion industry?

Because the alternative is that she is merely a laughable fraud and hypocrite.

In 1973 I worked at the international secretariat of Amnesty International and helped regarding AI's "Campaign to Abolish Torture". AI, through CAT. held an international conference in Paris which sought to define torture and identify governments which routinely use torture to suppress dissent or assist law enforcement. I became an expert concerning what constitutes torture. It is clear to me that the US has used torture for many years before President Bush made it a centerpiece of interrogation. It is also clear to me that, by and large, most Americans don't care. I am sure that the US, under Obama, continues to use harsh methods of interrogation which are "torture". Torture is probably commonly used by the US military and other US agencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Your article tries to suggest that torture is only supported by Republicans and "right wing" Christian extremists and that it is a recent practice by the US. It is supported by the large mass of Americans regardless of political party or religion and has been for decades. Lets face it Americans are a selfish and mean people, by and large.

But, like the subordinates of Dr. Mengle, the "were just following orders" and legal advice from the highly respected Cheney neocon John Yoo in our righteous might to defend Israel from "weapons of mass destruction" and us from severe withdrawals from our addiction to oil. The God of the Huckabees blesses them with ample exceptions and excuses not to uphold the standards they judge other by. God bless these "True Americans," "Christians" and "Patriots"

Here is the Modern Version of the Hippocratic Oath they all took:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

See the "If I do not violate this oath... part.

Here's the Classic's version of the last statement:

"If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot."

It sounds like a lot of them violated the oath.

Amazing a group that supports the right to life for all also supports abortions - seems like a group of hyprocrites with an ax to grind against the U.S. and this is left wing group so everything must be taken with a grain of salt

Congratulations for once on using the truthful word torture. Would that this level of honesty extended to all of the Post's coverage.

@TheBobBob: While you're correct that the Bush administration was criminal, they will never be held to account. After all, one of the chief functions of power is to prevent accountability. And nobody who could pursue charges against the Bush administration (e.g. Obama's or any future administration) will do so for fear that they too will lose the privilege of no accountability.

As for the "doctors" who aided and abetted in torture, I hope that every medical association known to humankind will ban them for life from any practice of medicine whatsoever. It's light punishment, but at least it's something.

Thank you for your timely article. I doubt that the Department of Justice will be of any real help.

For decades, there has been a well-organized cover-up - including through the D.O.J. - that has kept the public from learning about the same kinds of extreme abuses and human rights violations that have been perpetrated against US and Candian citizens and others.

I am one of thousands of survivors who are still working quite hard to recover from the horrific abuses. For decades, our voices have been actively suppressed, and our pleas for justice have been completely ignored.

Two days ago, at our NAFF nonprofit's webpage at http://naffoundation.org/Lets%20Get%20Real.htm, I posted an article explaining why we are working towards the development of a US Truth and Reconciliation Commission that will make such atrocities and human rights violations known to the public.

To those readers who believe the war detainees "got what they deserved", my suggestion is for them to spend just one weekend allowing themselves to be tortured via waterboarding, electric shock, sleep deprivation, starvation, sexual assault, and more. I guarantee that experiencing such atrocities first-hand will change their minds for good. After all, that is what such techniques are designed to do - break the minds and wills of the victims.

The only way I know to stop the ongoing sadistic madness is to develop a US Truth and Reconciliation Commission that will inform the public about the history and extent of these brutal techniques and related government programs.

I hope your readers will support us as we work towards the development of a US Truth and Reconciliation Commission that can help us to stop the sadistic madness, once and for all.

More evidence that the Bush Administration was led by criminal right-wing "Christian" extremists. Bush has admitted to waterboarding prisoners. The U.S. executed Japanese officers for the same crime after WWII. He will be held to account.