Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Torture, human experimentation, and Bush-Cheney war crimes


More disturbing details are emerging about the torture regime of the Bush-Cheney years:

High-value detainees captured during the Bush administration's "war on terror," who were subjected to brutal torture techniques, were used as "guinea pigs" to gauge the effectiveness of various torture techniques, a practice that has raised troubling comparisons to Nazi-era human experimentation, according to a disturbing new report released by Physicians for Human Rights, an international doctors' organization.

PHR, based in Massachusetts, called on President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and the US Congress to launch investigations into the role of physicians and psychiatric experts in the monitoring and assessments of the brutal interrogations.

"Health professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA monitored the interrogations of detainees, collected and analyzed the results of [the] interrogations, and sought to derive generalizable inferences to be applied to subsequent interrogations," said the 27-page report, entitled "Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program." "Such acts may be seen as the conduct of research and experimentation by health professionals on prisoners, which could violate accepted standards of medical ethics, as well as domestic and international law. These practices could, in some cases, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity."

Americans don't seem to want to know about the darker side of what was done in their name, about all the brutality behind the stars and stripes, but all those responsible for these atrocities, including those at the top who signed off on this torture regime, deserve nothing less than to be punished as the war criminals they are.

Meanwhile, despite Obama's efforts, America's purported ideals still lie in tatters.

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4 Comments:

  • It amazes me that there isn't more of an outcry about the former President and Vice President of the United States openly admitting they authorized the torture of detainees, in clear and blatant violation of Geneva Conventions and our own War Crimes Act.
    If there is any justice on this earth they should taken before the World Court at the Hague in shackles and tried for Crimes Against Humanity.
    These crimes were done in OUR NAME and deserve to be punished.

    By Anonymous squatlo, at 2:33 PM  

  • On the lighter side, here's a thought. Let's torture our current political leaders by forcing them to openly answer to the common public for their actions. Let's torture them into telling the truth and reducing their salaries to the national minimum wage since they are supposed to be servants of the public. Let's torture them into driving their own vehicles to work and make them buy their own gas with their own income. And lastly let's require them to pay for their own health care out of their own pockets, not ours. But then they wouldn't get to live like royalty, would they?

    By Anonymous Hammockjames, at 7:07 PM  

  • It seems we are in the wild west concerning laws about human experimentation. Using humans, distroying their lives in the so called name of advancing science...? EX-cuse -me. this is illegal and should be punished by law.

    By Blogger C, at 2:32 AM  

  • I'm saddened by the USA's actions, from the illegal war to the torture of prisoners in Iraq. What happened to the country i looked up to as a child who seemed to always have the moral high ground. It's no wonder the world has no time for the USofA anymore. So much for the land of the free.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:41 AM  

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