Psyche, Science, and Society

Evangelical Christians condemn torture

In a major development, the National Association of Evangelicals , an association of 30 million conservative evangelical Christians, has come out against torture. The NJAE Board adopted An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in An Age of Terror [See entire Declaration here.]

5. Ethical Implications: Everyone bears an obligation to act in ways that recognize human rights. This responsibility takes different forms at different levels. Churches must teach their members to think biblically about morally difficult and emotionally intense public issues such as this one. Our own government must honor its constitutional and moral responsibilities to respect and protect human rights. The United States historically has been a leader in supporting international human rights efforts, but our moral vision has blurred since 9/11. We need to regain our moral clarity.

6. Legal Structures: International law contains numerous clear and unequivocal bans on torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. These bans are wise and right and must be embraced without reservation once again by our own government. Likewise, United States law and military doctrine has banned the resort to torture and cruel and degrading treatment. Tragically, documented acts of torture and of inhumane and cruel behavior have occurred at various sites in the U.S. war on terror, and current law opens procedural loopholes for more to continue. We commend the Pentagon’s revised Army Field Manual for clearly banning such acts, and urge that this ban extend to every sector of the United States government without exception, including our intelligence agencies.

7. Concluding Recommendations: The abominable acts of 9/11, along with the continuing threat of terrorist attacks, create profound security challenges. However, these challenges must be met within a moral and legal framework consistent with our values and laws, among which is a commitment to human rights that we as evangelicals share with many others. In this light, we renounce the resort to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees, call for the extension of procedural protections and human rights to all detainees, seek clear government-wide embrace of the Geneva Conventions, including those articles banning torture and cruel treatment of prisoners, and urge the reversal of any U.S. government law, policy, or practice that violates the moral standards outlined in this declaration.

It’s nice to see religion standing for rights and liberty.

[Hat tip to AmericaBlog.]

Add comment March 12th, 2007

Hopeful political developments in Iraq?

Robert Dreyfuss sees positive political developments in Iraq:

Few Americans pay attention to Iraqi politics, but over the past few days something has occurred that could change the course of the war. For the first time since the Iraqi election of 2005, a coalition of Sunni and Shiite Arab parties and leaders is starting to take shape, across the sectarian divide that has fueled the civil war. It began two days ago, with the announcement by the Fadhila (Islamic Virtue) party that it is leaving the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), to become an independent political party.

With 15 seats in the Iraqi parliament and with a significant grassroots base throughout the Shiite areas of southern Iraq, Fadhila is a nationalist party committed to the idea of a unitary Iraqi state. It is opposed to the breakup of Iraq into regions or statelets. And its leader, Nadim al-Jaberi, is explicitly opposed to sectarianism. He is committed to reaching out to Sunni parties and secular groups to find common ground, and a new political coalition. Most important, like most of the Sunni parties in Iraq, al-Jaberi and Fadhila support the rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

Fadhila is currently negotiating with Sunni and secular parties—including the Sunni religious bloc, a quasi-Baathist Sunni nationalist party and the secular Iraq National List led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi—on the formation of a new Sunni-Shiite-secular bloc in Iraq that would have nearly 100 votes in the 270-member Iraqi parliament.

A nationalist, nonsectarian front, America’s worst nightmare, but perhaps Iraq’s last hope.

Add comment March 12th, 2007

Miles on Science and Torture

Here is Steven Miles’ Editorial on the recent study, by Başoğlu and colleagues, examining potential differences in long-term effects between psychical torture and psychological torture, often thought of as “torture-lite.” They found that these two forms of torture were equally disturbing of long-term mental health. The journal editors kindly made the Başoğlu paper available without a subscription, but not Miles’ editorial. Dr. Miles has kindly sent me his submitted draft, posted here:

Science and Torture

Steven H. Miles, MD

[Archives of General Psychiatry. 2007;64]

Torture is illegal and practiced by more than half of the nations of the world. The United Nations Convention against Torture defines it as any “act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person . . . when such pain or suffering is inflicted by, or at the instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of, a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”(1) Despite this clarity, torturing nations often contrive laws or rationalizations that attempt to excuse the abuse of disarmed captives as warfare or as merely vigorous interrogation, so called “torture lite.”

In its war on terror policies for “Counter Resistance” interrogations the United States defined words like “severe” or “intentional” in Convention Against Torture in ways that it had rejected when invoked by other countries defending their mistreatment of prisoners. It also proposed that there is a legally meaningful distinction between “torture” and a more permissible “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”(2) Article III of the Geneva Convention, which has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court in the Hamdan decision, takes a different view. The Convention simply includes torture in a list of acts that “are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever;” these include “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; . . . outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”(3) The Department of Justice created its definitions from dictionaries and legal precedents without referring to research showing the long lasting psychiatric, neurologic, social, occupational, and physical sequellae of torture. In 2004, in response to criticism from human rights advocates, the government slightly amended its interrogation techniques and selectively cited two clinical studies as noted by Dr. Başoğlu.(4) The recently enacted Military Commissions Act denies prisoners the right to invoke the provisions of the Geneva Convention and allows the President to interpret the requirements of international law.(5)

The distinction between “torture” and “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” is useless. Research, such as the United States’ extensive MK-ULTRA and MK-SEARCH studies found that stressful interrogations have diminished intelligence value. Misinformation elicited by pain may lead to mistakenly grounded policies or sorties that needlessly expose soldiers to hostile fire. Harsh interrogations radicalize prisoners and the populations from which they come, degrade the self image of the military, undermine national support for the government, make it difficult to recruit intelligence assets, and obtain information that is inadmissible at trial.(6) Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s own Working Group informed him of these research findings (7) before he authorized harsh Counter Resistance interrogations.(8)

The distinction between torture and degrading treatment is also dangerous. Başoğlu and his colleagues show that the severity of long lasting adverse mental effects is unrelated to whether the torture or degrading treatment is physical or psychological, and unrelated to objective measures of the severity of techniques. The wrongness of these inflicted harms is compounded by the fact that most abused prisoners, including those in the present war on terror, are innocent or ignorant of terrorist activities. Innocent or not, torture survivors rarely get the mental health treatment that they need. In addition, soldiers who participate in atrocities are themselves at increased risk of post traumatic stress disorder.(9)

Although torture is done to an individual; it is aimed at a society. Like terrorism, it is destructive of civil societies. It is often aimed at political targets, journalists, academics, labor organizers, and voices of moral authority with the aim of consolidating government power. The wish to promote civil societies is why the international community asserted that no appeal to national sovereignty could legalize torture.(10) Although the ideal of that assertion has not been realized, individual appeals for humane treatment by nations, professional societies and human rights groups regularly secure better conditions of confinement or even release from prison. On a larger scale, when citizens can and do apply political pressure to their own torturing governments, those nations move in the direction of complying with international law.(11) The grounding for these appeals and thus the imperfectly realized aspiration of laws against torture are being eroded by the events in the war on terror.

Human rights respecting nations must reestablish the authority of international law against torture. Medical societies, compromised by active or passive collaboration with harsh interrogations, must reclaim their moral authority to challenge torture domestically and abroad. The American Psychiatric Society has commendably dissociated itself from harsh interrogations. Eighteenth century Europe abandoned legal interrogational torture on the twin conclusions that it was an affront to human dignity and a poor way to acquire information. Empirical research such as this paper can help us find that persuasive holding ground again.

Notes (all links validated on October 29, 2006).

1. United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1987), http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm

2. Bybee JS. Standards of Conduct for Interrogation Under 18 USC. 2340-2340A. Aug. 1, 2002 http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/doj/bybee80102mem.pdf

3. Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 1949, www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm

4. U.S. Justice Department Memorandum Deputy James B. Comey Deputy Attorney General Re: Legal standards applicable under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A. December 30, 2004. http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/18usc23402340a2.htm

5. Military Commissions Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-366, 120 Stat. 2600 (Oct. 17, 2006), http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:5:./temp/~c109glHQDj::

6. Miles SH. Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror. Random House, NY, 2006 p. 13-18.

7. Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism. Apr. 4, 2003. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/03.04.04.pdf

8. Secretary of Defense. Memorandum for the Commander, US Southern Command; Counter Resistance Techniques in the War on Terrorism. Apr. 16, 2003. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/03.04.16.pdf

9. MacNair RM. Perpetration-induced traumatic stress in combat veterans. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 2002; 8:63-67.

10. Glendon MA. A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: Random House, 2002.

11. Hathaway OA. The Promise and Limits of the International Law of Torture. in Levinson, Sanford (ed). New York: Torture: A Collection. Oxford University Press, 2004, 199-212.

Add comment March 12th, 2007

Psychological defenses and abusive detainee healthcare

Nancy Sherman, former teacher of military ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of Stoic Warriors, has a new piece, From Nuremberg to Guantanamo: Medical Ethics Then and Now, in Dissent exploring the defenses used by the health professionals at Guantanamo to those used by the Nuremberg doctors.

She was, I believe, on the same visit in 2005 in which American Psychological Association President Ronald Levant as well as American Psychiatric Association President Steven S. Sharfstein participated. Naturally, her account is not quite so gushing as that of President Levant:

Though we were invited as observers, we saw none of the 505 inmates during the whole day, save for one stolen glimpse of two bearded prisoners in white tunics and loose pants behind screens and barbed wire. Still, two scenes involving inmates made my moral worries concrete.

Seven detainees were on hunger strike, a steep drop from the escalated numbers over the summer. We were assured that the hunger strikers were being treated humanely. The commanding doctor at the time, Captain John Edmonson, showed our group (which included U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley, Joint Staff Surgeon Joseph Kelly, as well as top civilian physicians who work for Undersecretary of Defense for Health Affairs William Winkenwerder) a tube used for feeding�a thin nasogastric tube, a 10-French Dobhoff�and explained that lubrication and anesthesia were routinely used before insertion. The senior military and civilian doctors listened attentively as they were told that there was overall �complicity,� in that most strikers did not forcibly resist insertion of the tubes or remove them once they were in place. Not one doctor asked about the consequences of not acquiescing to the tube; none openly worried that acquiescence might not be the same thing as consent; none voiced the concern that pulling out a nose tube funneled down the back of one�s throat to the top of one�s stomach might, in some circumstances, be painful, and that failure to do that might at best be a weak form of consent.

The scene is disturbing in light of confirmed reports, just four months after my visit, that striking detainees had been strapped into restraint chairs during and immediately after force-feeding in order to prevent, according to officials, purging and asphyxiation that might result from being fed in a prostrate position. Some detainees alleged that while in the chair they were force-fed not only nutrients but also diuretics and laxatives. The result was that they urinated and defecated on themselves. The allegations raise serious questions about the role of doctors in authorizing the procedure. If diuretics and laxatives were used, who approved their use? I raised this question with a senior medical official in the Pentagon, but have not received an answer.

A SECOND SCENE has returned to me often. We were taken to the psychiatric wing of the hospital and introduced to two young female army psychiatrists. The presiding commander of Guantánamo at the time, General Jay W. Hood, praised them highly for their dedication in the face of resistance from detainees.

Five months later, I replayed that scene as I listened to the account of a detainee lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan. Colangelo-Bryan is a young lawyer who, in his own words, is �cynical by nature� and takes all his clients� reports with �a grain of salt.� When he took on the representation of several Bahrainee detainees at Guantánamo in 2004, he took their concerns with an even �bigger grain of salt� than he would in a typical case of commercial litigation. One of those detainees, Jumah al-Dossari, had been in Camp 5, the maximum-security facility, for extended periods. The blocks in Camp 5 have solid walls, with the only access to the outside world being a food-tray slot on a door that opens to a hall where large industrial fans drown out any attempt at conversation. Not surprisingly, al-Dossari suffered from the psychological stress of isolation. During their consultations, al-Dossari said that in interrogation sessions he was wrapped in an Israeli flag, chained to a floor while a female interrogator put on his face what he believed to be menstrual blood, and beaten unconscious by guards. The attorney was initially skeptical of some of the statements until he later read FBI memos and a book by a military officer that detailed exactly the same interrogation techniques his client had described, including the menstrual blood tactic.

In the spring of 2005, while al-Dossari was still in Camp 5, he asked his attorney in a quiet voice, �What can I do from going crazy?� On October 15, 2005, Colangelo-Bryan went down to Guantánamo to consult with him. During the interview, al-Dossari said he needed to go to the bathroom. Colangelo-Bryan called in the military police so that they could remove the shackles holding al-Dossari to the floor in the meeting area. The attorney then walked out of the room and the MPs took al-Dossari to a small cell with a toilet, located on the other side of the meeting area and separated from it by a steel mesh wall. A couple of minutes went by, and then a few more. The attorney had a sense that something might be wrong and peeked into the door to the meeting area. There he saw a pool of blood. He looked up to find a gaunt figure hanging from the mesh wall on the cell side, face covered in blood, body limp, eyes rolled back in his head, his lips and mouth swollen and protruded. He called in the MPs who cut down al-Dossari from the mesh wall and, at the attorney�s request, began CPR. Colangelo-Bryan was ordered to leave, but as he left he heard al-Dossari gasp for air.

Al-Dossari survived this suicide attempt, but during his time at Guantánamo he has tried to commit suicide eleven other times. (There were three successful suicides at Guantánamo by other detainees in June of 2006.) After al-Dossari�s October 15 attempt, his attorney asked for transfer to a less isolating camp, some meaningful social interaction, a few books, and one telephone call with his family. All four requests were denied. Al-Dossari then filed a motion with the court that was also denied. The Court argued that he was not isolated because he had been interrogated twenty-nine times over the past two years��a novel legal position,� his attorney commented (though perhaps in line with the notion that rapport building is, as I was told by Hood, the preferred method of interrogation at Guantánamo). Because of the Graham-Levin Amendment stripping detainee cases of habeas corpus (upheld recently in the Military Commissions Act), al-Dossari�s team has not been able to obtain legal relief.

Legal issues aside, the case raises concerns about the role of psychiatrists and behavioral therapists at Guantánamo: in particular, were mental health workers involved in decisions about al-Dossari�s isolation and restrictions? Are they typically involved in such decisions?

Add comment March 12th, 2007

Breaking: Army Surgeon General “Coverup” Kiley resigns!

Evidently Lt. General Kiley, implicated in many recent, and not so recent, scandals, has submitted his resignation, according to an Army Press Release today:

On March 11 Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, Army Surgeon General and Commanding General of Army Medical Command, submitted his request to retire from the U.S. Army to Acting Secretary of the Army Pete Geren. Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, current Deputy Surgeon General, immediately assumed the Surgeon General’s duties.

Acting Secretary Geren further directed March 11 the immediate convening of the required advisory board who will recommend a slate of candidates from among officers in the Army Medical Department for consideration as the next Surgeon General. Title 10, United States Code requires such a board. The officer ultimately selected must be approved by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. This board will be announced as soon as possible with the intent to convene on a date in April. Major General Pollock will execute the duties of The Surgeon General/Commanding General, Army Medical Command until a new officer is named.

The Washington Post has a different slant: Army Surgeon General Forced to Retire

The Army forced its surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, to retire, officials said Monday, the third high-level official to lose his job over poor outpatient treatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Kiley, who headed Walter Reed from 2002 to 2004, has been a lightning rod for criticism over conditions at the Army’s premier medical facility, including during congressional hearings last week. Soldiers and their families have complained about substandard living conditions and bureaucratic delays at the hospital overwhelmed with wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan….

Geren asked Kiley to retire, said a senior defense official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was not involved in the decision to ask Kiley to retire, the official said.

Kiley’s removal underscored how the fallout over Walter Reed’s shoddy conditions has yet to subside. Instead, the controversy has mushroomed into questions about how wounded soldiers and veterans are treated throughout the medical systems run by the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs and has become a major preoccupation of a Bush administration already struggling to defend the unpopular war in Iraq.

There goes another of those responsible for implementing and supporting the American torture regime at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Of course, it is not an accident that Lt. General Kiley was the official invited to address the American Psychological Association (APA)

Physicians for Human Rights has issued two statements on Kiley’s resignation.

Executive Director Leonard S. Rubenstein:

“The scandal over the treatment of veterans at Walter Reed is symptomatic of a larger problem: the erosion of the core principals of military medical ethics by the Bush Administration,” stated Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights. “The resignations of General Kiley and Assistant Secretary Winkenwerder should be followed by a ban on health professional involvement in national security interrogations, a practice prohibited by major medical associations, but ardently defended by these former officials.”

Retired Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, MD:

“The use of doctors to break hunger strikes at GTMO, the refusal to allow independent review of medical practices for treating detainees, the failure to provide adequate care to all patients, and the use of health professionals in the intelligence chain of command are affronts to the professional legacy of the US military medical corps,” stated Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, MD (USA-ret.), an advisor to PHR. “Though these resignations are a good first step, Congress and the Pentagon must work together to quickly restore the professional integrity of the military medical corps through stronger oversight of military medicine, including public hearings.”

1 comment March 12th, 2007

Army sending injured soldiers to Iraq

A few weeks ago came the news that soldiers injured in Iraq were disposable, kept in rooms with mold, sometimes lying in their own urine. Now Mark Benjamin of Salon (who has conducted excellent reporting on the APA-interrogations issue and on psychologists’ role in Guantanamo torture) reports that the Army is now sending injured soldiers to Iraq.

On Feb. 15, Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd Division’s 3rd Brigade were summoned to a meeting with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon. These are the men responsible for handling each soldier’s “physical profile,” an Army document that lists for commanders an injured soldier’s physical limitations because of medical problems — from being unable to fire a weapon to the inability to move and dive in three-to-five-second increments to avoid enemy fire. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers’ profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It is a claim division officials deny….

Eight soldiers who were at the Feb. 15 meeting say they were summoned to the troop medical clinic at 6:30 in the morning and lined up to meet with division surgeon Lt. Col. George Appenzeller, who had arrived from Fort Stewart, Ga., and Capt. Aaron K. Starbuck, brigade surgeon at Fort Benning. The soldiers described having a cursory discussion of their profiles, with no physical exam or extensive review of medical files. They say Appenzeller and Starbuck seemed focused on downplaying their physical problems. “This guy was changing people’s profiles left and right,” said a captain who injured his back during his last tour in Iraq and was ordered to Iraq after the Feb. 15 review.

One example out of many:

One female soldier with psychiatric issues and a spine problem has been in the Army for nearly 20 years. “My [health] is deteriorating,” she said over dinner at a restaurant near Fort Benning. “My spine is separating. I can’t carry gear.” Her medical records include the note “unable to deploy overseas.” Her status was also reviewed on Feb. 15. And she has been ordered to Iraq this week.

As in so much of the abusive treatment of American soldiers and Guantanamo detainees, Lt. General “Coverup” Kiley is implicated:

The Pentagon was notified of the reclassification of the Fort Benning soldiers as soon as it happened, according to Master Sgt. Jenkins. He showed Salon an e-mail describing the situation that he says he sent to Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley.

Add comment March 12th, 2007

Anti-war encampment on the National Mall

I have received this communication from the Editors of Axis of Logic regarding and anti-war encampment on the National Mall puts pressure on the Democrats.

Dear Editor,

I am writing to you to let you know that beginning today, March 12, the anti-war movement in the United States is turning a corner – the first since September 11, 2001. Today, we will be occupying the Washington Mall in this nation’s captal by moving in and setting up tents from March 12 to ??. We have planned and prepared for this – not as a “protest” – but as an act of resistance. We have obtained limited permits and have developed an infrastructure for transportation, emergency medical services, a sound stage and internal security, At this juncture, we cannot know just what to expect in terms of the numbers of people who will actually show up – or the reaction of the police state. We can tell you that thousands of people have been writing in, saying that they plan to come – with their tents.

Our purpose? To confront the “Democrats” and demand that they stop the war – Now. We plan to challenge them to stop the war in Iraq now, first by defunding the war – an act which we believe would have a demoralizing effect for the Bush regime. We will be encamped directly in front of the congress. We be putting up banners to voice our demand, conducting direct actions throughout the week and confronting congress men and women inside the Halls of Congress.

We expect that the corporate media will either ignore this action completely or diminish It’s importance by give a passing reference. We are asking you as an editor of alternative news and information, to disseminate news of these events using the resources available to you. During this period of confrontation and resistance we will be publishing daily (or every other day, depending on our communication resources) updates and reports – including photographs and links to videos on the events of the day. We will be sending these reports to you via e-mail. We are asking if you would kindly consider giving prominence to The Encampment to Stop the War on your website and/or list serve by publishing these reports as we send them to you?

Thank you very much,
Les Blough and Paul Harris, Editors Axis of Logic
Boston, MA
www.axisoflogic.com
les@axisoflogic.com
paul@axisoflogic.com
Telephone on site in Washington: +617-201-3890

Add comment March 12th, 2007