The American Torture Doctors

By Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D., August 3, 2004

One would think the physicians in the US military would have learned enough from the cautionary history of the Third Reich's ghoulish Dr. Joseph "The Angel Of Death" Mengele and his team of torture-doctors to know that they should
NEVER practice medicine in violation of universal human rights or their Hippocratic Oath. Evidently, they did not.

According to Dr. Robert Jay Lifton's 7-29-04 essay in the Doctors and Torture the US military physicians who were assigned to the American military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, have been complicit in: (1) the US military's torture interrogation of prisoners; and (2) the cover-up of these war crimes by issuing falsified death certificates for prisoners who were, in fact, tortured to death. [1, 2] Of course, it almost goes without stating that this hubristic lawlessness disgusts even our closest allies and understandably inflames the hatred of America throughout the Islamic world.

Meanwhile, Americans who watch the nightly-televised newscasts from their government-media complex aren't being informed about any of this, but are instead being falsely reassured that "Iraq's interim government has things under control," even as eyewitness accounts from the international journalists inside Iraq report exactly the opposite -- that Iraq is increasingly spinning out of control. [3]

The Bottom Line The whole world is watching, and they really want to know the answers to these questions: (A) Do the American people approve of the criminal acts that are being perpetrated in their name; (B) If so, why have Americans become so morally-blind as to silently capitulate to these heinous war crimes [4]; (C) If not, where is the hue-and-cry for accountability from our country, especially when the Abu Ghraib investigation has become another farcical whitewash; and (D) Why has Mr. Bush refused to demand the resignations of any higher-level officials despite overwhelming evidence that the interrogation policies which resulted in these outrageous human-rights violations were, in fact, approved from the top down? [5, 6]

ENDNOTES
[1] If the above click-on to Dr. Lifton's 7-29-04 NEJM essay doesn't link, paste this URL into your webserver:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/5/415
If these acts of complicity by the US military's physicians are true, they constitute prosecutable war crimes under the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, as well as the Convention Against Torture.

[2] At least 40 foreign prisoners have reportedly died inside the US military's prisons under circumstances which point to homicide. Moreover, the International Red Cross has reported that 70-90% of the US military's 50,000+ prisoners in Iraq ultimately had to be released because they were innocent. Furthermore, a high percentage of the remaining non-innocent prisoners were merely involved in petty crimes. Nonetheless, many of them were tortured.
Finally, a significant number of Iraqi children have been incarcerated and abused inside US military's prisons: http://www.geocities.com/thechristiandigest/17.html  "Whitewash Of US Military's Imprisonment & Abuse Of Children In Iraq"

[3] Read Robert Fisk's 8-2-04 CD essay, which is an eyewitness report from Baghdad:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0802-01.htm  "Can't Bush & Blair See That Iraq Is About to Explode?"

[4] Read the International Herald Tribune's 7-27-04 CD editorial:http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0727-12.htm
"Whitewash At Abu Ghraib". According to MSNBC/Newsweek's 8-2-04 article,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5569687/site/newsweek/   "A Battle Over Blame", the US military's investigative report might, at most, rebuke Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

[5] Read Theresa Hampton's 7-28-04 CapitolHillBlue.com article: http://www.capitolhillblue/artman/publish/printer_4921.shtml
"Bush Using Drugs To Control Depression, Erratic Behavior". In addition to Mr. Bush's neoconservative ideology, scofflaw defiance, and monarchistic sense of entitlement, his current use of a powerful antidepressant medication could be yet a fourth reason why he seems to be oblivious to his own administration's grave violations of international law. If journalistic mention of this strikes the reader as unfair, please read the next endnote.

[6] According to Boston College History Professor Robert Dallek, who authored An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (Little Brown, 2003), several US presidents suffered from serious illnesses which required them to take mind-altering medications while they were still in the White House, unbeknownst to the American public at the time. For this reason, Professor Dallek argues: (A) that the health of a potential or sitting US president is highly relevant; (B) that it's prudentially necessary that the US electorate be truthfully informed of the president's medical record; and (C) especially of any health condition or prescribed medical treatment which might impair the president's ability to process information or to make executive decisions. Therefore, it's journalistically relevant when medical evidence suggests that Mr. Bush could be functionally impaired due to his current medication with a mind-altering antidepressant (e.g., see endnote 5).

Author: Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D. is the Executive Director of the American Center for International Law (ACIL)

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