Psyche, Science, and Society

American and California Psychological Associations move to gut bill on interrogations

I have written recently about efforts in the California legislature to get health professionals, psychologists included, out of interrogation of enemy combatants. Senator Ridley-Thomas has introduced a resolution that would request the military and CIA to remove all California licenses health providers from involvement in interrogations. [For arguments in favor of the Resolution, see the Physicians for Human Rights letter to the Senate committee.] There was a hearing on Monday (January 14) at which proponents of the Resolution spoke. At this hearing the California Psychological Association (CPA) and the American Psychological Association (APA) together proposed a revised resolution. While appearing to be a slight modification, the APA-CPA revisions would completely gut the Resolution.

In particular, by inserting three words [bolded below], the APA/CPA entirely change the meaning of the critical Resolved clause. Rather than follow the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association and state that involvement in interrogations is in conflict with the ethics of a health profession, they would turn this into another vacuous statement against torture, as if everyone, even those who order it, doesn’t claim to be against torture:

Resolved, That the Legislature hereby requests the United States Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to remove all California-licensed health professionals, including, but not limited to, physicians and psychologists, from participating in any way in prisoner and detainee interrogations that involve torture, in view of their respective ethical obligations, the record of abusive interrogation practices, and the Legislature’s interest in protecting California health professionals from the risk of criminal liability; and be it further

The APA-CPA revision would make this Resolution even weaker than APA resolutions, which condemn not only torture, but the similar but legally distinct “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Notice also that, in order to make this change palatable, they totally distort the fundamental guidelines of the World Medical Association, as you can see from the language they want remove, here indicated by strikeout:

WHEREAS, The World Medical Association (WMA) issued guidelines stating that physicians shall not use nor allow to be used their medical knowledge or skills, or health information specific to individuals, to facilitate or otherwise aid any interrogation, legal or illegal; and

WHEREAS, The guidelines issued by the WMA also state that physicians shall not participate in or facilitate torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading procedures of prisoners or detainees in any situations;

In the category of the humorous, if it wasn’t an indicator of how closely allied with the military the APA is, is that they remove the word “military” from a phrase pointing to the clear record that psychologists participated in abuse

WHEREAS, Evidence in the public record indicates that certain military psychologists, working on behalf of the United States government, participated in the design and implementation of psychologically abusive interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, and elsewhere, including sleep deprivation, long-term isolation, sexual and cultural humiliation, forced nudity, induced hypothermia and other temperature extremes, stress positions, sensory bombardment, manipulation of phobias, force-feeding hunger strikers, and more.

Also in the category of macabre humor is the APA’s wish to revise history and strike “psychologists” from the list of professionals reported to have participated in abuse:

WHEREAS, in 2002, for the first time in American history, the Bush administration initiated a radical new policy allowing the torture of prisoners of war and other captives with confirmed reports from the International Red Cross, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet (British medical journal), military records and first-person accounts stating that California licensed physicians, psychologists, and nurses have participated in torture or its cover up against detainees in U.S. custody

They are correct, of course, that it was not only military psychologists who participated in abuse, as CIA and CIA consultants are also known to have participated in torture and abuse. Yet they add the word military when they suggest adding a largely false statement [only one psychologist, Michael Gelles, is clearly documented to have objected to abuse, and Gelles was a civilian, not a "military" psychologist at the time] about psychologists objecting to abuse:

while evidence in the public record also indicates that certain military psychologists objected to the use of such methods

Here is the entire revised CPA-APA draft of the Resolution. Language they want removed is indicated with strikeout, while that they added is bolded:

RESOLUTION: MILITARY TORTURE AND HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
(Draft: 1-3-08)

WHEREAS, the citizens of the United States of America and the residents of the State of California acknowledge January 15th as the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and mark the third Monday in January as a federal and state holiday to commemorate his life work as a Civil Rights leader, activist and an internationally acclaimed proponent of human rights who warned: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it,” and

WHEREAS, in 2002, for the first time in American history, the Bush administration initiated a radical new policy allowing the torture of prisoners of war and other captives with confirmed reports from the International Red Cross, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet (British medical journal), military records and first-person accounts stating that California licensed physicians, psychologists, and nurses have participated in torture or its cover up against detainees in U.S. custody; and

WHEREAS, in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a broad coalition of medical, human rights and legal organizations are petitioning the State of California to warn its medical licensees of the legal prohibitions against torture and the risks of prosecution, and are demanding that the U.S. Government remove California doctors and psychologists from interrogation and torture of detainees; and

WHEREAS, Dr. King challenged Americans to remain true to their most basic values, stating: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy,” and

WHEREAS, Californians to Stop Medical Torture are carrying petition signatures to the California State Senate, asking that the Senate warn California licensed physicians, psychologists, nurses and other health care workers of possible future prosecution for participation in torture — cruel and degrading practices that have become a national shame;

WHEREAS, Health professionals licensed in California, including, but not limited to physicians, osteopaths, naturopaths, psychologists, psychiatric workers, and nurses, have and continue serve nobly and honorably in the armed services of the United States; and

WHEREAS, United States Army regulations and the War Crimes Act, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, state in Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions and in the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) require that all military personnel report and not engage in acts of abuse or torture; and

WHEREAS, the CAT defines the term torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, 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”; and

WHEREAS, in 2002, the United States Department of Justice reinterpreted national and international law related to the treatment of prisoners of war in a manner that purported to justify long-prohibited interrogation methods and treatment of detainees; and

WHEREAS, Physicians and other medical personnel and psychologists serving in noncombatant roles are bound by international law and professional ethics to care for enemy prisoners and to report any evidence of coercion, or abuse of detainees; and

WHEREAS, The World Medical Association (WMA) issued guidelines stating that physicians shall not use nor allow to be used their medical knowledge or skills, or health information specific to individuals, to facilitate or otherwise aid any interrogation, legal or illegal; and

WHEREAS, The guidelines issued by the WMA also state that physicians shall not participate in or facilitate torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading procedures of prisoners or detainees in any situations; and

WHEREAS, The ethical policy of the American Medical Association (AMA) prohibits physicians from conducting or directly participating in an interrogation or monitoring interrogations with the intention of intervening; and

WHEREAS, AMA policy also states that “[t]orture refers to the deliberate, systematic or wanton administration of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatments or punishments during imprisonment or detainment. Physicians must oppose and must not participate in torture for any reason … Physicians should help provide support for victims of torture and, whenever possible, strive to change the situation in which torture is practiced or the potential for torture is great”; and

WHEREAS, United States Code section 2340 states that (1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control; (2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from: (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (C) the threat of imminent death; or (D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

WHEREAS, In May 2006, the American Psychiatric Association stated that psychiatrists should not “participate directly in the interrogation of persons held in custody by military or civilian investigative or law enforcement authorities, whether in the United States or elsewhere,” and that “psychiatrists should not participate in, or otherwise assist or facilitate, the commission of torture of any person. Psychiatrists who become aware that torture has occurred, is occurring, or has been planned must report it promptly to a person or persons in a position to take corrective action”; and

WHEREAS, In August 2006, the American Psychological Association stated that “psychologists shall not knowingly participate in any procedure in which torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment is used or threatened” and that “should torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment evolve during a procedure where a psychologist is present, the psychologist shall attempt to intervene to stop such behavior, and failing that exit the procedure”; and

WHEREAS, In June 2005, the House of Delegates of the American Nurses Association issued a resolution stating all of the following: “prisoners and detainees have the right to health care and humane treatment”; “registered nurses shall not voluntarily participate in any deliberate infliction of physical or mental suffering”; “registered nurses who have knowledge of ill-treatment of any individuals including detainees and prisoners must take appropriate action to safeguard the rights of that individual”; “the American Nurses Association shall condemn interrogation procedures that are harmful to mental and physical health”; “the American Nurses Association shall advocate for nondiscriminatory access to health care for wounded military and paramilitary personnel and prisoners of war”; and “the American Nurses Association shall counsel and support nurses who speak out about acts of torture and abuse”; and

WHEREAS, In March 2005, the California Medical Association stated that it “condemns any participation in, cooperation with, or failure to report by physicians and other health professionals the mental or physical abuse, sexual degradation, or

WHEREAS, In November 2004, the American Public Health Association stated that it “condemns any participation in, cooperation with, or failure to report by health professionals the mental or physical abuse, sexual degradation, or torture of prisoners or detainees,” that it “urges health professionals to report abuse or torture of prisoners and detainees;’ and that it “supports the rights of health workers to be protected from retribution for refusing to participate or cooperate in abuse or torture in military settings”; and

WHEREAS, The United States military medical system in Guantanamo Bay,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and other United States operated foreign military prisons failed to protect detainees’ rights to medical treatment, failed to prevent disclosure of confidential medical information to interrogators and others, failed to promptly report injuries or deaths caused by beatings, failed to report acts of psychological and sexual degradation, and sometimes collaborated with abusive interrogators and guards; and

WHEREAS, Current United States Department of Defense guidelines authorize the participation of certain military health personnel, especially psychologists, in the interrogation of detainees as members of “Behavioral Science Consulting Teams” in violation of professional ethics. These guidelines also permit the use of confidential clinical information from medical records to aid in interrogations; and

WHEREAS, Evidence in the public record indicates that certain military psychologists, working on behalf of the United States government, participated in the design and implementation of psychologically abusive interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, and elsewhere, including sleep deprivation, long-term isolation, sexual and cultural humiliation, forced nudity, induced hypothermia and other temperature extremes, stress positions, sensory bombardment, manipulation of phobias, force-feeding hunger strikers, and more, while evidence in the public record also indicates that certain military psychologists objected to the use of such methods; and

WHEREAS, Published reports indicate that the so-called “enhanced interrogation methods” of the Central Intelligence Agency reportedly include similar abusive methods and that agency psychologists may have assisted in their development; and

WHEREAS, in August 2007 the American Psychological Association prohibited psychologist participation in nineteen techniques associated with “enhanced” interrogation methods, also referred to as “no-touch torture” and “torture light”; and

WHEREAS, Medical and psychological studies and clinical experience show that these abuses can cause severe or serious mental pain and suffering in their victims, and therefore may violate the “torture” and “cruel and inhuman treatment” provisions of CAT and the United States War Crimes Act, as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2006; and

WHEREAS, The United States Department of Defense has failed to oversee the ethical conduct of California-licensed health professionals related to torture;

WHEREAS, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in.” Therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate and the Assembly of the State of California jointly that the Legislature hereby requests all relevant California agencies, including, but not limited to, the Board of Behavioral Sciences, the Dental Board of California, the Medical Board of California, the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, the Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine, the California State Board of Pharmacy, the Physician Assistant Committee of the Medical Board of California, the California Board of Podiatric Medicine, the Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians, the Board of Psychology, and the Board of Registered Nursing, to notify California-licensed health professionals via newsletter, email, and Web site about their professional obligations under international law, specifically Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the amended War Crimes Act, which prohibit the torture of and the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment of detainees in United States custody; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature hereby requests all relevant California agencies to notify health professionals licensed in California that those who participate in torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment may one day be subject to prosecution; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature hereby requests the United States Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to remove all California-licensed health professionals, including, but not limited to, physicians and psychologists, from participating in any way in prisoner and detainee interrogations that involve torture, in view of their respective ethical obligations, the record of abusive interrogation practices, and the Legislature’s interest in protecting California health professionals from the risk of criminal liability; and be it further

Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate transmit copies of this resolution to the United States Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and all relevant California agencies, including, but not limited to, the Board of Behavioral Sciences, the Dental Board of California, the Medical Board of California the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, the Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine, the California State Board of Pharmacy, the Physician Assistant Committee of the Medical Board of California, the California Board of Podiatric Medicine, the Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians, the Board of Psychology, and the Board of Registered Nursing.

If this attempt to gut this important legislative initiative is to be stopped, California psychologists, other health providers, and all citizens concerned about human rights will have to organize a massive lobbying campaign. Letters, phone calls, and personal meetings with State Senators and Assembly members are critical. Remember to be polite and to focus upon why this matters to the citizens and government of California. The legislature is not interested in internal conflicts within the health professions. Many are not concerned about foreign affairs. But they are very interested in kinds of activities the health providers licensed by the state are engaged in.Remember also that they may know little or nothing about these issues. Explain succinctly and to the point.

3 comments January 16th, 2008

Barbara Ehrenreich: Hillary’s Real MLK Problem

Barbara Ehrenreich explodes the great (wo)man theory of history, Hillary Clinton version:

Hillary’s Real MLK Problem

by Barbara Ehrenreich

At first I took it as another, yawn, white rip-off of black culture and creativity: the Rolling Stones appropriating the Bo Diddley beat, Bo Derek sporting corn rows, and now Hillary giving Lyndon Baines Johnson credit for the voting rights act of 1965. If you had to give this honor to a white guy, LBJ was an odd choice, since he’d spent the 1964 Democratic convention scheming to prevent the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party from taking any Dixiecrat seats. By Clinton’s standards, maybe Richard Nixon should be credited with the legalization of abortion in 1972.

But Clinton’s LBJ remark reveals something more worrisome than racial tone-deafness - a theory of social change that’s as elitist as it is inaccurate. Black civil rights weren’t won by suited men (or women) sitting at desks. They were won by a mass movement of millions who marched, sat in at lunch counters, endured jailings, and took bullets and beatings for the right to vote and move freely about. Some were students and pastors; many were dirt-poor farmers and urban workers. No one has ever attempted to list all their names.

There’s a problem too, of course, with the conventional abbreviation of the Civil Rights Movement into two names - Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. What about Fannie Lou Hamer, who led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s delegation to the 19464 convention? What about Ella Baker, Fred Hampton, Stokely Carmichael and hundreds of other leaders? The Great Person theory of history may simplify textbook-writing, but leaves us with no clue as to how change actually happens.

Women’s rights, for example, weren’t brokered by Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem over tea. As Steinem would be the first to acknowledge, the feminist movement of the 70s took root around kitchen tables and coffee tables, ignited by hundreds of thousands of now-anonymous women who were sick of being called “honey” at work and excluded from “men’s” jobs. Media stars like Friedan and Steinem did a brilliant job of proselytizing, but it took an army of unsung heroines to stage the protests, organize the conferences, hand out the fliers, and spread the word to their neighbors and co-workers.

“Change” is this year’s Democratic battle cry, but if you don’t know how it happens, you’re not likely to make it happen yourself. A case in point is Clinton’s 1993 “health reform” plan. She didn’t do any “listening tour” for that, no televised town meetings with heart-rending grassroots testimonies. Instead, she gathered up a cadre of wonks for months of closed-door meetings, some so secretive that the participants themselves were barred from bringing in pencils or pens. According to David Corn of The Nation, when Clinton was told that 70 percent of Americans polled favored a single-payer system at the time, she responded sarcastically with, “Now tell me something interesting.”

She could have gone about things differently, in a way that wouldn’t have left 47 million Americans uninsured today. She could have started by realizing that no real change would come about without a mobilization of the ordinary people who wanted it. Instead of sequestering herself with economists and business consultants, she might have met with representatives of nurses’ organizations, doctors’ groups, health workers’ unions, and patient advocates. Then she could have gone to the public and said: I’m working for a major change in the way we do things and it’s going to run into heavy resistance, so I’ll need your support in every possible way.

But she did it her way, and ended up with a 1300 page plan that no one, on either side of the aisle, liked or could even comprehend - proving that historical change isn’t made by the smartest girl in the room, even if she shares a bed with the president. Similarly, she ignored the anti-war movement of this decade and alienated untold numbers of Democratic voters, feminists included.

I’d like to think that Obama, with his community organizing experience and insistence on firing people up, gets it a little better. But whoever is elected president this year, there won’t be any real change in a progressive direction without a mass social movement to bring it about - either by holding the president accountable or by holding his or her feet to the fire. And a mass social movement doesn’t begin at the top. It begins right now, with you.

Add comment January 15th, 2008

Callum & Neil MacColl, Chris Wood and Karine Polwart: Moving On Song (Go, Move, Shift)

A great version of the Ewan MaColl classic:

Add comment January 14th, 2008

Physicians for Human Rights on California health provider interrogations bill

Physicians for Human Rights President Leonard Rubenstein has written a letter supporting the California bill that would try and get California licensed health providers out of any direct role aiding national security interrogations. [Available as pdf here.]:

January 11, 2007

Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas
State Capitol, Room 4061
Sacramento, CA 95814

Re: Support for Resolution on Health Professional Involvement in Torture

Dear Senator Ridley-Thomas:

I am writing on behalf of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an organization that for 20 years has been engaged in mobilizing the health professions to advance human rights. We strongly support the resolution you have offered. It is a critical step toward restoring the integrity of the health professions in the context of national security policy and renewing public confidence in these professions.

For its entire history, PHR has been engaged in documenting torture throughout the world and ending medical complicity in it. We also led the process of establishing international standards for medical documentation of torture (the Istanbul Protocol), which were endorsed by the UN General Assembly. In 1997 Physicians for Human Rights shared in the Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the Steering Committee of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

In recent years, we have been actively engaged in stopping torture by the United States and any medical participation in it. We issued a seminal report on the use of psychological torture, Break Them Down, and a medico-legal analysis of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, Leave No Marks (available on our web site, www.physiciansforhumanrights.org.) PHR has been particularly concerned about the role of health professionals as designers, implementers, and supervisors of systematic torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees. This role is in direct contravention of the foundational tenets of medical ethics and domestic and international human rights law and significantly undermines the health professional’s role as healer. We and our advisers have written analyses of the problem for the Journal of the American Medical Association and other scientific and legal journals, provided op-ed articles for major newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, and provided testimony to the U.S. Congress. We have also played an active role in providing guidance and advice to professional associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association, in setting out the ethical standards applicable to the health profession in the context of interrogation.

It is this background that leads us to support the resolution you are offering. It states clearly that all health professionals should not participate in torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Moreover, it follows the approach the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association took after careful study, which holds that to be true to ethical commitments, physicians should not participate in the interrogation of individual detainees at all – even an interrogation that doesn’t involve torture or cruel treatment. These organizations adopted this stance in recognition that the traditional standard – no participation in torture and cruel treatment – is inadequate. I would like to review the reasons for this stance.

First, it is indisputable that even the most benign interrogation is designed to induce distress and anxiety. Interrogations conducted by the United States in the context of detention of terrorist suspects, significantly exacerbate this distress, and the potential for long-term harm, because they take place in a closed environment where human rights violations, including no due process and indefinite confinement, can easily occur. Engaging in any interrogation support in these circumstances, even where the interrogation is legal, is inconsistent with core ethical value of all the health professions in avoiding harm. This stance is similar to the ethical prohibition on physicians from participation in executions even in states where, as in California, capital punishment is legal.

Second, while it is often claimed that health professionals can play the role of a “safety officer” in interrogations, the investigations we and others have conducted have shown that the opposite is the case: in this role, health professionals in Behavioral Science Consultation Teams become the decision-makers in the calibration of the degree of pain and distress to be inflicted. This is shown in a forthright report issued by the Army Surgeon General in 2005, which on the one hand affirmed that health professionals act to assure that interrogations are safe, but expected them to advise interrogators when it was permissible to increase the distress and pain inflicted on a detainee.

Third, it is often argued that health professionals, particularly behavioral scientists, by sharing information and insights about individual detainees, can help establish rapport with a detainee and otherwise support non-coercive interrogations. But this role provides an invitation – which is embodied in current military rules – to share medical records and results of examinations with interrogators. The AMA and American Psychiatric Association have therefore come to the view that their members may train interrogators generally about human behavior and interrogation but not participate in individual interrogations.

Finally, there is a terrible slippery slope in engaging in interrogations that fall short of torture or cruel treatment. As we know, the interpretations of what amounts to torture and cruel treatment by the Justice Department, CIA and Department of Defense are ever-changing, and health professionals ought not to be in the position of being told that a certain interrogation method is acceptable because the lawyers have said so. They are not in a position, either from the point of view of legal knowledge of authority, to contest such determinations, and the prudent approach is to remove them from the situation where such choices must be made. The record of interrogations by the United States has indeed shown that psychologists and physicians have been reassured that the conduct involved does not involve torture and cruel treatment, when in fact it does. Whether serving as supposed “safety officers,” members of Behavioral Consultative Science Teams (BSCTs), or as advisors and implementers to interrogations, health professionals, especially psychologists and physicians, have had their medical expertise and prestige twisted to legitimate criminal treatment of suspected terrorists. The untenable position in which they have been placed can only be avoided by banning participation altogether.

We are aware that some health professionals and the American Psychological Association wish to continue a role for health professionals in interrogations, and thus urge adherence to the pre-9/11 standard, which only prohibits participation in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. But the experience of the past six years shows why that standard is unworkable and ineffective, and why both internationally – through the World Medical Association – and domestically, the majority approach since 9/11 has been to end the participation of members of health professions obligated to “do no harm” in interrogation altogether.

Because your resolution does precisely this approach we support it. It can help provide health professionals serving in national security environments the ethical and legal guidance they so desperately require to operate in US detention facilities in a manner that comports with their professional ethics and values. By passing this resolution, California will also send a strong message to national security agencies that there is no circumstance where a health professional should be allowed to participate in the willful infliction of harm, and that California will hold health professionals who engage in these activities accountable for their violation of their solemn duty to “do no harm”.

Sincerely,

Leonard S. Rubenstein
President

3 comments January 13th, 2008

Comments on the reception of new NEJM Iraq mortality study

I have just posted the following comments on the new NEJM study of Iraq mortality on the Media Lens Message Board, in response to heated criticism of the new study:

 I don’t think this is fair. The NEJM study is another attempt to do something very difficult: assess the consequences of the war and occupation in a situation of extreme violence. I notice that Les Roberts was fairly positive, while raising a number of important issues. [One version of Les' thoughts can be read  [url=http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2008/01/10/les-roberts-on-new-iraq-mortality-study/]here[/url]] I think we should follow Les’ example here.

While there are many issues with the new study, there is no fatal flaw.

I think the authors assess deaths due to violence because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that they can estimate this figure more accurately than total excess mortality. Violent deaths do not rely upon an accurate estimate of prewar mortality several years earlier, while excess mortality estimates do. This is something in which the NEJM study clearly fails. This failure does suggest, as  Les suggests, that the NEJM study is an undercount. Other problems are, as Cockburn points out, the steady rate of mortality in the NEJM study.

But Cockburn attributes nefarious motivations to the fact that Iraqi interviewers were sent to Amman for training. I will bet that this was so that they could be trained by WHO staff. Remember, at this time Les Roberts and, I believe, Gilbert Burnham, went to Amman when conducting L2 and conducted the data analyses there. The reason was the same: they felt it was too dangerous for foreigners to go into Iraq.

As for the ORB study, I was impressed when it came out. but the absence of any publication of methodological details, much less their failure to post the additional results they promised for early October cast doubt upon the study. Until they publish more, it can’t be taken as meaning much of anything, alas.

I’m afraid we’re in danger of falling into a dangerous trap of defending heartily studies whose the results we like and attacking those whose results we dislike. I teach my research students that we should subject studies confirming our prior beliefs to extra scrutiny while being careful not to search mightily for methodological flaws in those studies we don’t agree with. Otherwise, we learn nothing.

If Les welcomes this study, while examining its weaknesses, I suggest we should as well. Examining violent mortality in Iraq is extremely difficult. we may never know what the true figure is. As of summer 2006, it was most likely somewhere between 150,00 and 650,000. By now, it is probably somewhere between 250,00 and 1.2 million.  In any terms, that is truly horrifying and a humanitarian catastrophe. We should work to get that message out. To fight NEJM vs Lancet will only deflect the  message and work to the right’s advantage. Let’s not give them that advantage.

I suspect there will be responses at the Media Lens Message Board. Go there and read them.

Add comment January 12th, 2008

CIA “Enhanced interrogations” from the Cold War

Proponents and critics of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation,” a.k.a., torture, have been united in pretending that such horrors are new to the United States, in contradiction to “American values.” Christian Science Monitor reporter Warren Richey, who has provided extensive coverage of the Jose Padilla case, including his torture in the Navy brig, now reminds us that CIA torture goes back decades, even within the United States. Richey relates the story of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko, who was subjected to extreme isolation from 1964 to 1967, out of fear that he was really a KGB mole. Richey’s account leaves little doubt that prolonged isolation is, indeed, torture. “To say it was a nightmare is not enough. It was hell,” as Nosenko himself stated in a speech to CIA employees. As Mark Benjamin has pointed out, isolation is the CIA’s favorite form of torture. Isolation was also routine for all new detainees at Guantanamo, as the leaked 2003 and 2004 Standard Operating Procedures showed.

Here is Richey’s account of the torture of Yuri Nosenko:

A cold-war case of CIA detention still echoes

The Yuri Nosenko affair unveiled US use of extreme isolation to try to ‘break’ the KGB defector.

By Warren Richey

Behind the debate over the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of videotapes depicting waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques lies a fundamental question: Can government officials use such aggressive tactics without violating US law?

No American court has yet ruled on the legality of Bush administration interrogation policies. But the war on terror isn’t the first time US officials have used harsh methods to try to “break” a detainee.

From 1964 to 1967, Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko was subjected to extreme isolation and sensory deprivation and was administered drugs because his CIA handlers believed he was still working in secret for the KGB. They imprisoned him in a windowless concrete cell to try to disrupt him psychologically and force him to confess his loyalty to Moscow, according to CIA documents and a congressional investigation. He never did.

The case has been examined in several books – one was published last year – and a 1986 movie depicting the intense debate over whether Mr. Nosenko was an actual defector. Lost in much of the discussion has been the legality of his treatment.

“It was reprehensible,” says Stansfield Turner, who headed the CIA from 1977 to 1981 and ordered an internal examination of the Nosenko affair in 1977. “I was aghast when I uncovered it.”

Nosenko’s experience in CIA custody in the 1960s is relevant today because of similarities between his harsh treatment and the use of some of the same techniques now, more than 40 years later, against suspected Islamic terrorists. Among them are three men who were held at the military brig in Charleston, S.C., after being designated as enemy combatants by President Bush.

Like Nosenko, all three men – Yasser Hamdi, Jose Padilla, and Ali Saleh al-Marri – were held in isolation cells in the United States with minimal human contact for three years or more in an attempt to force confessions by disrupting their ability to maintain rational thought, according to interrogation specialists and mental-health experts.

Although the US Supreme Court in 2004 upheld the president’s authority to order the military detention of enemy combatants, no US judge has ever ruled on the legality of using severe isolation as an interrogation technique. It remains unresolved even as the Supreme Court weighs the legal rights of foreign terror detainees at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and as the Justice Department undertakes a criminal investigation of the CIA’s destruction of tapes documenting the use of harsh interrogation methods.

Now 80, Nosenko lives in the US under an assumed name. He was contacted by the Monitor through an intermediary but declined to be interviewed for this story.

An ‘increasingly concerned’ CIA

One indication of the CIA’s own assessment of the legality of Nosenko’s treatment was revealed last June, when the agency released documents concerning some of its once-secret operations.

“This office [CIA's Office of Security] together with the [CIA's] Office of General Counsel became increasingly concerned with the illegality of the agency’s position in handling a defector [Nosenko] under these conditions for such a long period of time,” states a memo dated 16 May 1973, nearly six years after Nosenko was released.

The memo is in sharp contrast to the 1978 congressional testimony of former CIA Director Richard Helms, who ran the agency at the end of Nosenko’s detention. He was asked who gave legal authorization for the CIA to hold a KGB defector in an isolation cell for 1,277 days with no charges filed and no access to a lawyer or the courts. Mr. Helms said then-Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach had authorized it. But Mr. Katzenbach told the congressional panel that he would never have given such legal advice.

In a recent telephone interview, Katzenbach said the CIA never shared with him any details of Nosenko’s treatment. “All they were talking about was the amount of time he was being held, which was harsh,” he says.

Katzenbach, who later served as attorney general in the Johnson administration, says the intelligence agency was operating under its own rules. “The CIA had no authority to question anybody any differently than the FBI or the local police force,” he says.

The legality of Nosenko’s treatment in the 1960s was never tested in court in part because Nosenko later waived his right to sue the US government over his detention and treatment. After his release, the agency declared Nosenko a bona fide defector, paid him $175,000, and hired him for $35,000 a year as a consultant. In 1974, he became a US citizen.

As with the Nosenko affair, the US government is working to avoid judicial scrutiny of interrogations of terror suspects. Former enemy combatant Yasser Hamdi was released in 2004 and is now living freely in Saudi Arabia after signing an agreement not to sue the US government over his treatment.

In contrast, lawyers working on behalf of the other two Charleston detainees, Mr. Padilla and Mr. Marri, have filed civil lawsuits claiming their clients were tortured in the military prison. Lawyers for Padilla also filed a second suit Friday in San Francisco against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo. The suit says Mr. Yoo was a legal architect of the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation policies that were “intended to destroy Mr. Padilla’s ordinary emotional and cognitive functioning … to extract from him potentially self-incriminating information.”

Padilla has been diagnosed with significant mental disabilities stemming from his three years and seven months in the Charleston brig. He was convicted last summer in a terror conspiracy trial in Miami. On Tuesday, a federal judge begins a week-long hearing to consider whether Padilla should receive a more lenient sentence because of his harsh treatment at the brig. Federal prosecutors want Padilla sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Marri remains in an isolation cell at the brig, but his conditions of confinement have eased since 2005. A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., is currently examining the constitutionality of Marri’s detention, though not the legality of the interrogation techniques used against him. A ruling is expected soon.

One common thread running through all four men’s stories is a perceived need by the government to quickly extract information deemed essential to protect US national security.

“One of the difficulties with this kind of issue is that it is a slippery slope,” says Katzenbach. “If you can put somebody in isolation for 24 hours, why not 48, why not a week?”

Mr. Turner agrees. “There is a very tough line here. What if you really think that by torturing somebody you are going to prevent a major catastrophe?” he asks. “My inclination is that you have to stick by your moral principles and put constitutional rights of individuals first regardless of the circumstance.” But the former CIA director says the US government should not rule out any particular technique or tactic, nor should it adopt procedures automatically allowing such tactics.

A real defector from the Soviet KGB?

In the Nosenko case, the stakes were enormous, coming at the height of the cold war. Nosenko’s interrogation began in April 1964 after a group of CIA officials became suspicious that Nosenko might not be a genuine defector. They thought he was sent by the KGB to throw the CIA off the trail of Soviet moles who they feared had penetrated America’s spy network. In addition, they thought he was sent by Moscow to insulate the KGB from any connection to Lee Harvey Oswald. Mr. Oswald assassinated President John Kennedy in November 1963.

Nosenko was held for three years in extreme isolation, first in a locked attic room in a CIA safe house in Clinton, Md. Later he was transferred to a specially built windowless concrete cell at Camp Peary, the CIA training facility near Williamsburg, Va.

He was questioned and requestioned about whether the KGB had ever approached Oswald during the three years Oswald lived in the Soviet Union prior to the Kennedy assassination. Nosenko said he had personally reviewed Oswald’s KGB file and that, while the KGB had conducted surveillance of Oswald, it had never tried to recruit him.

This issue was critical because KGB involvement with Oswald might suggest Soviet involvement in the Kennedy assassination – a prospect that could have propelled the cold war into a nuclear war.

Nosenko insisted that Oswald was a “nut” and that the Soviets had deemed him unsuitable for intelligence work.

Some CIA officials were sure Nosenko was lying and was part of a larger Soviet operation. But how to make him talk? He was a trained KGB officer who knew how to resist interrogation.

According to a CIA internal investigation, agents decided to use the Soviet Union’s own techniques against him. They treated him precisely as the KGB had treated Yale University professor Frederick Barghoorn, who had been arrested in Moscow on trumped-up spy charges to set up a potential swap for a genuine Soviet spy nabbed in New York. The KGB held the professor for 16 days in October 1963 before the intervention of his friend, President Kennedy, won his release.

Isolation to ‘break’ Nosenko

Nosenko’s cell built at Camp Peary contained a metal bed bolted to the floor, a foam mattress, one light bulb, and a television camera. There were no windows. No sheets or blankets. No reading material. Just four soundproof, concrete walls – a replica of a Soviet detention cell.

“To say it was a nightmare is not enough. It was hell,” Nosenko told CIA employees in a 1998 speech.

The guards were instructed not to speak with him or acknowledge his presence. They watched him via television 24 hours a day.

Such conditions of confinement are described in a 1956 US government-funded secret report titled “Communist Control Techniques.” It discusses how the Soviets used prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation to drive detainees to the brink of insanity and condition them to confess. Isolation can work as a kind of tightening vise on the psyche, according to the report. Prison guards estimated that the average detainee “broke” in four to six weeks.

By then, a detainee loses “many of the restraints of ordinary behavior,” the report says. “He may soil himself. He weeps, he mutters, and he prays aloud in his cell. He follows the orders of the guard with the docility of a trained animal. Indeed, the guards say that such prisoners are ‘reduced to animals.’ ”

But there are exceptions. “Those convinced of their innocence and familiar with KGB methods may be able to stand up under isolation for a long time,” the report says.

Nosenko told CIA employees in his 1998 speech that one way he survived the mental strain of isolation was by keeping his mind active. Twice he created a chess set out of threads pulled from his clothes. Twice the guards confiscated it. Once he found a piece of paper in a toothpaste box listing ingredients. Excited to have something to read, he tried to position himself away from the TV camera so the guards wouldn’t see that he was reading. They confiscated that, too, he said in the speech.

When his mind began to deteriorate, Nosenko said he fought back by yelling and complaining. Finally, his jailers gave him a blanket. Later they let him go outside into a small exercise cage where he could see the sky.

At one point, he said, he was given LSD and it almost killed him. The guards revived him by dragging him into the shower and alternating the water between hot and cold.

Former CIA Director Helms told a congressional hearing in 1978 that a request had been made to use certain drugs against Nosenko to make him talk. He said he refused to allow it. In contrast, Turner wrote in his 1985 book “Secrecy and Democracy” that Nosenko was administered drugs on 17 occasions in an attempt to make him talk.

Turner ordered an investigation of the Nosenko matter and released its findings to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Included was a memo written one month before Nosenko was placed in isolation. It outlined a plan for “hostile interrogation.” It noted: “Subject must be broken at some point if we are to learn something of the full scope of the KGB plan.”

CIA investigators also recovered notes said to have been written near the end of the detention, outlining possible ways to end and cover up the Nosenko affair. The objective: “to liquidate & insofar as possible to clean up traces of a sitn in which CIA cd be accused of illegally holding Nosenko.” Among the options were to “liquidate the man,” “render him incapable of giving coherent story (special dose of drug etc.),” and “commitment to loony bin w/out making him nuts.”

In his 2007 book “Spy Wars,” former CIA officer Tennent Bagley acknowledges that he wrote the notes but says he had no murderous intent. He says in his book that he was merely “giving vent to frustration in the way a baseball fan might shout, ‘Kill the umpire!’ ” Suggestions of killing Nosenko or rendering him crazy were “impossible and impractical,” he writes. He still believes Nosenko was a Soviet plant, decades after the CIA formally embraced him as a bona fide defector.

For his part, Nosenko has said that while he was angry about his treatment, he never blamed the CIA. Instead, it was a small group of CIA officers whom he calls “the ugly ones.”

In his 1998 speech, Nosenko urged young intelligence officers to “never allow a repeat of such cases.” Defectors should be allowed to remain free but kept under tight surveillance, he said. Locking people up under “ugly conditions” achieves nothing, he said.

Nosenko ended that speech by telling his audience that he came to the US in 1964 but that his life in America began in 1969. “I love this country,” he said. “I am a very proud American.”

To the chagrin of Mr. Bagley, Nosenko’s former handler, they gave him a standing ovation.

Add comment January 12th, 2008

Background on the Kenyan crisis

Last month Kenya had an election. Early vote counts suggested a major opposition victory. After some strange actions, the existing President was declared the victor. Protests, rioting, and ethnic strife ensued. I have been looking for an informative background article to post. I finally found this excellent article by Gérard Prunier, who has written an excellent book on the colonial roots of the Rwandan genocide:

Kenya: roots of crisis

by Gérard Prunier

To many people in the world - and even to many Kenyans themselves itself - the violence which followed the elections in Kenya on 27 December 2007 has come as a surprise. Unfortunately, it shouldn’t have. The combination of economic and ethno-political factors in Kenya had created an explosive mix which was just waiting for the right - or rather “wrong” - circumstances to explode. The 2002 elections had been a lucky near-miss; this time, the favourable configuration that operated then did not repeat itself.

Kenya’s “democratic” politics

To understand the Kenyan crisis in the context of its national, regional and global situation, it is necessary to examine the regime which followed independence in 1963. Britain’s withdrawal from the country had taken place amidst a considerable fear that the Mau Mau anti-colonial insurrection of 1952-1960 might impinge upon the politics of the new state and lead to further violence. Nothing of the sort happened - partly because of the elevation to the presidency of the leader of the nationalist movement Jomo Kenyatta, who once in power swerved from radical nationalism to conservative bourgeois politics.

Kenyatta was a Kikuyu (or Gikuyu) and the enigmatic Mau Mau movement had largely been a Kikuyu phenomenon (most of the 12,000 rebels or “suspects” killed by colonial forces in a brutal campaign were Kikuyu). This had caused the British wrongly to conclude that Kenyatta was the leader of the Mau Mau. But in any case, on becoming president Kenyatta - head of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) in an effectively one-party state - embraced extreme tribalistic politics and packed the new “Kenyan” bourgeoisie he promoted with Kikuyu and members of related tribes such as the Embu and the Meru. At the time of his death in 1978 most of the country’s wealth and power was in the hands of the organisation which grouped these three tribes: the Gikuyu-Embu-Meru Association (GEMA).

Kenya has forty-eight tribes, with three - the Kikuyu, the Luo and the Luhyia - together representing almost 65% of the population. Meanwhile, the GEMA tribes during Kenyatta’s time (1963-78) composed perhaps 30% of Kenyans, almost all concentrated in the highlands of the central province. These figures meant that in order to square the ethno-political circle in Kenya, power-brokers had to forge deals between the three big groups and somehow relate to the shifting gaggle occupying the fourth corner.

In Kenyatta’s time the deal was simple: the Kikuyu and their smaller relatives, after making an agreement with the minority tribes, ran everything. The Luo, who eventually tried to challenge this ordering, were forcefully marginalised as the prudent Luhyia looked on. After Kenyatta died in 1978, his vice-president Daniel arap Moi - who was from the Kalenjin minority tribe - inherited the mantle of power on the understanding that he would not upset the arrangement designed to keep the two other large tribes (and particularly the Luo) out of power.

But Daniel arap Moi proceeded to use his new status to cleverly divide his Kikuyu allies (amongst them the man who would be his successor as president, Mwai Kibaki), so as progressively to sideline them. By 1986, Moi had concentrated all the power - and most of its attendant economic benefits - into the hands of his Kalenjin tribe and of a handful of allies from minority groups (see Peter Kimani, “A past of power more than tribe in Kenya’s turmoil”, 2 January 2008).

But Kikuyu ascendancy had been reined in only, not destroyed. Under Jomo Kenyatta, the Kikuyu - claiming martyr status for their sufferings during the Mau-Mau “emergency”, and relying on tacit government support - had spread beyond their traditional territorial homelands and “repossessed lands stolen by the whites” - even when these had previously belonged to other tribes. Thus Kikuyu “colonists” had fanned out all over Kenya, often creating strong rural antagonisms.

Kenyatta’s successor, Daniel arap Moi, used a consummate juggler’s skill to keep the ethno-political balance working in his favour. At the same time, the first two multi-party elections after other movements emerged to challenge Kanu (in 1992 and 1997) were occasions for carefully state-managed ethnic violence designed to achieve two objectives: keep the dangerous Kikuyu underfoot, and pit the Kalenjin’s minority allies against each other in order better to control them.

By the time of the 2002 election, however, the system had run its course: foreign donors were alienated, President Moi (having ruled for twenty-four years) was getting old, and a “democratic” opposition was gaining momentum. But if everybody agreed on the principle of ridding Kenya of its Kalenjin-based authoritarian state, the question of who and what would be the replacement remained open.
Moi had a brainwave: he thought that the best way for him to maintain his influence over politics after leaving the presidency would be to pick as the governing party candidate Kenyatta’s own son, Uhuru. This artful move, Moi calculated, would rally the Kikuyu behind a prestigious but empty symbol (Uhuru was not overly bright and his name spoke louder than his personality). But the stratagem backfired completely and the opposition united behind the veteran Kikuyu politician, Mwai Kibaki, thus creating a unique situation in which both leading candidates were Kikuyu.

In other ways, however, they were very different: one embodied the ghost of yesterday’s near-dictatorship while the other was seen as offering the hope of a democratic opening. This contrast felicitously de-ethnicised the election, turning it into a contest between the old and the new. At the time Raila Odinga, the leading Luo politician, tirelessly campaigned for Kibaki and deployed his tribal followers behind a man who - albeit a Kikuyu and a Kikuyu with a past - was seen as the candidate for change. The economic stagnation of previous years meant that many of the expectations that were invested in Kibaki were of an economic nature: Kibaki, it was hoped, would restart the economy and then proceed to share out its benefits more equally.

The Kibaki administration

Mwai Kibaki was elected president in December 2002 with over 62% of the vote. The country’s foreign backers were only too quick to salute the polls as “a triumph for democracy”. In a way they were right - the polls had been free and fair, and the candidate for change had been elected. But in another way this was a hasty form of wishful thinking because the ostensible “de-tribalisation” of the election had been due more to a series of fortuitous coincidences than to a real decline in the appeal of ethnic politics.

The key words in the campaign, however, had been “hope” and “change”, and to some extent the new Kibaki administration managed to deliver the goods. The economy did pick up and Kenya witnessed a spectacular economic recovery, largely based on Keynesian economic recipes and helped by a favourable international environment.

This can be illustrated by the annual rate of growth in 2002-07, which reveals a gradual improvement from -1.6 % in 2002 to 2.6% by 2004, 3.4 in 2005, and an estimated 5.5% in 2007. But this was only one side of the economic coin. Social inequalities also increased; the fruits of economic growth went disproportionately to the already well-off (and, among those, to the Kikuyu well-off); and corruption reached new heights, matching some of the excesses of the Moi years. When John Githongo, the man appointed by President Kibaki to fight corruption, blew the whistle in January 2005, he had to flee to Britain in fear of his life (see Michael Holman, “Kenya: chaos and responsibility”, 3 January 2007). Githongo is himself a Kikuyu, and his denunciation of a massive series of financial scandals in which hundreds of millions of dollars had vanished was seen as a betrayal of his tribe as well as of the government he served.

Moreover, the security situation in Kenya deteriorated steadily in these years, with the ordinary people bearing the brunt of a triple process:

* a growing wave of routine crime in urban areas

* rival agrarian claims leading to pitched battles between ethnic groups fighting for land, particularly around Mount Elgon and in Kisii

* a running feud between the police and the Mungiki sect, which left over 120 people dead in May-November 2007 alone.

Mungiki is a bizarre cross between pre-Christian Kikuyu neo-traditionalism and an extortionist gang. The sect ran protection rackets on the matatu (collective taxi) routes, helping it to prosper among the poorest urban neighbourhoods and among the landless-peasant squatters in central province; it also has a tradition of hiring its muscle-boys to political candidates during election campaigns. In 2002, the Mungiki had backed the losing Uhuru Kenyatta camp. This cost it dearly in terms of political clout, and it had desperately tried to recover the lost ground by intensifying its terroristic hold on the slum population and on the matatu owners.

The accumulating result of these various processes was a feeling of deep dissatisfaction - not so much with President Kibaki as a person but with his entourage, with his robbing cronies, and with his incapacity to sympathise and do something about the plight of poor Kenyans (made all the more shocking by the level of economic growth the country was enjoying). Raila Odinga, the candidate of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), was then able to capitalise on that frustration in a way that fused various types of motivation:

* ethnic (the Kikuyu have grabbed everything and all the other tribes have lost)

* political (Kibaki betrayed his promise for change)

* social (crime and violence are out of control)

* economic (what is the point of economic growth when it does not bring any benefits to the ordinary citizen).

As the electoral campaign neared its climax in December 2007, the ODM opposition enjoyed a widespread lead in opinion polls and seemed ready to sweep Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) out of power.

The December 2007 election

The election on 27 December 2007 was both a parliamentary and a presidential one. At the legislative level, 2,548 candidates from 108 parties were vying for 210 seats; at the presidential level, three candidates - the incumbent Mwai Kibaki , ODM leader Raila Odinga and former foreign minister Kalonzo Musyoka (who had split from the ODM) - were competing.

Everybody (including himself) knew that Kalonzo Musyoka had no chance of winning and that he was simply angling for the position of a strategic post-election ally who could sell his support to a probable minority victor in need of additional backing. Kalonzo Musyoka is a Kamba, and the Kamba - although closely related to the Kikuyu - had chosen the British camp during the Mau Mau emergency. This gives them a hybrid status in the Kenyan ethno-political landscape, in which they hold the capacity to swing either with the Kikuyu or against them.

The polls were a messy business for a number of reasons. The voters’ rolls had been poorly updated or at times not updated at all. Some dead people were still on the rolls and electors who had changed residence had not been properly struck off in one place and re-registered at their new address. The rules governing the help which could be given to illiterate voters (up to 80% of the electoral body in some remote constituencies) were poorly enforced. Foreign and national observers were not always given free access to the polling stations, and later to the ballots.

But all in all, the parliamentary segment of the election proceeded smoothly. The definitive results have not at the time of writing been officially posted, but a provisional tally (based on 181 out of 210 seats) is possible. Twenty-two parties won seats, although only four can be considered as “serious” (the eighteen others have between one and three MPs, sharing twenty-eight seats between them): :

* Raila Odinga’s ODM, which won ninety-two seats

* Mwai Kibaki’s PNU, which won thirty-four seats

* Kalonzo Musyoka’s splinter ODM-K, which won sixteen seats

* Uhuru Kenyatta’s Kanu, which won eleven seats.

The results speak for themselves: with 45% of the MPs, the opposition has a clear majority over the incumbent administration .

This is what makes the results of the presidential election definitely suspect. Kenya’s electoral commission (ECK) declared on 30 December that Kibaki had garnered 4,584,721 votes against 4,352,993 for his rival Raila Odinga, and immediately proceeded to inaugurate the incumbent president as the winner. This tight margin (little more than 230,000 votes, about 2.5% of those cast) is very fragile in view of the following facts.

In seventy-two of the constituencies, the figures on the ballot forms signed by the ECK returning officers and the agents of the candidates differ from the figures released by the national counting centre. At Ole Kalou constituency, for example, local ECK figures gave Mwai Kibaki 72,000 and Raila Odinga 5,000 out of 102,000 registered votes. But by the time the figures for that same constituency were released at the central level, Kibaki’s winning tally had jumped to 100,980 votes (i.e. 99% of the registered voters).

The pattern was repeated elsewhere. In Elmolo constituency, Kibaki was said by local ECK officials to have won by 50,145 votes, which then translated itself into 75,261 votes at the national level. In Kieni the discrepancy was between 54,337 (local level) and 72,054 (national tally). In various other constituencies (Lari, Kandara, Kerugoya) thousands more had “voted” in the presidential election than in the legislative one, even though the two ballots had been held concurrently .

All this points to a limited but widespread form of rigging which would not have had such catastrophic consequences had not the race been so closely contested. (After all, if several constituencies have probable rigging levels of 10,000-30,000 votes, there is no way a victory by 230,000 votes be considered solid.) On 1 January, Samuel Kivuitu - the respected chairman of the ECK - admitted : “I don’t know who won the election and I won’t know till I see the original records, which I can’t for now until the courts authorise it”.

It seems that what happened was that the Mwai Kibaki vote was artificially inflated rather than that Raila Odinga’s vote was tampered with. The evidence seems clear: even if gerrymandering had distorted the legislative vote vis-à-vis the presidential one (during the Moi years, the “enemy” Kikuyu constituencies had seen their demographic weight systematically eroded in this way), how could the pro-ODM trend at the parliamentary level turn itself into a contradictory support for the anti-ODM president? The possibility of such a split-personality vote is remote, as it requires that almost all those voting for minority parties would also have voted for Kibaki.

The bloody aftermath

The results of this manipulation have been disastrous. Almost as soon as the ECK hastily proclaimed Kibaki to be the winner, both the Nairobi slums and the western province exploded - the violence of the slum-dwellers reflecting their social frustration and the westerners’ arson-cum-machete attacks stemming from their hatred of the Kikuyu “colonists”. The political violence should thus be seen as both tribal and socio-economic; because, even if far from all Kikuyu are rich beneficiaries of the regime, many rich beneficiaries of the regime are Kikuyu. Such a situation recalls - especially for the Luo - the frustrations of the 1960s and 1970s.

The vote itself was primarily anti-establishment rather than crudely anti-Kikuyu, however: only six members of the cabinet survived the landslide, and many of the victims - including vice-president Moody Awori, planning minister Henry Obwocha, roads minister Simeon Nyachae, and tourism minister Moses Dzoro - were not Kikuyu. Even the few Luo or other westerners who were also PNU members lost their seats. Several Moi administration survivors - such as former minister Nicholas Biwott or Moi’s own son Gideon Moi - were also axed, often by nearly unknown candidates who took their seats with ease. This is one reason why the minority parties won so many seats: incumbency was a distinct liability and voters appeared ready to elect anybody who seemed ready to promote change.

It is when that trend towards long-awaited change appeared about to be blocked once more by the man who had already betrayed it after 2002 that violence exploded. The configuration of two relationships - Luo-Kikuyu, and Kikuyu with power - meant in the circumstances that it could not but be anti-Kikuyu. At the time of writing there have been at least 600 “official” deaths (as registered in hospitals and by other reliable sources); but this total is almost certainly an underestimate, especially if information from all the isolated rural areas where old scores are being settled were available.

While Luo have slaughtered Kikuyu settlers in their midst in the west, Mungiki thugs have rallied to the tribe and have been busy killing Luo in the Nairobi slums, hoping to ingratiate themselves with the big bosses of Kiambu, Nyeri and Murang’a. There are already as many as 250,000 internally-displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees (into Uganda). Factories are idle, many roads are closed, and food and humanitarian crises loom. In Uganda, Rwanda and the eastern DR Congo, the interruption of fuel supplies coming from Mombasa is threatening transport. Even Tanzania is beginning to feel the economic aftershocks of the disturbances. By a conservative estimate, the Kenyan economy is losing $30 million a day and the loss for the whole region - though anybody’s guess - must be far greater.

On 2 January 2008, President Kibaki announced that he was “ready to have a dialogue with the concerned parties”. This was a good start but, once more, the 76-year-old president seemed to be a prisoner of his past (and, perhaps, of his entourage). He stalled Desmond Tutu on the bishop’s arrival from South Africa in the effort to mediate (in contrast to Raila Odinga, who had immediately met Tutu); and when on 3 January attorney-general Amos Wako announced the creation of three committees designed to find a solution to the crisis (on peace and reconciliation, on the media aspects of the situation and on legal affairs), they were packed with burned-out politicians like Simeon Nyachae, Njenga Karume or George Saitoti, most of whom had just lost their seats in the election.

On 7 January, it is reported that Kibaki has invited Ghana’s president, John Kufuor, to re-engage in the mediation effort that was proposed as the violence first escalated; and that he has offered to create a government of national unity with the opposition which (an official statement says) “would not only unite Kenyans but would also help in the healing and reconciliation process”.

It is an artful departure from the boast of his precipitous acceptance speech of 30 December, when President Kibaki had declared: “Fellow Kenyans, you have given us a vote of confidence in the values and principles…that we began five years ago. You have chosen the leaders you wish to serve you during the next five years”.
In the circumstances, the claim was neither truthful nor realistic. It is unclear whether Mwai Kibaki’s latest manoeuvres represent a genuine shift of position or a tactical adjustment to desperate conditions. In any case, the creation of a government of national unity is now the sole, albeit painful compromise available if Kenya’s violence is to be contained and some sort of progress beyond this nightmare made. After that, a just and truthful reckoning with what has happened in Kenya must be attempted.

1 comment January 12th, 2008

Mike Huckabee’s Message to Iowa

A little late, but better late than never:

Add comment January 10th, 2008

Les Roberts on new Iraq mortality study

Les Roberts, an author of the two previous Lancet studies of Iraq mortality,  sends the following comments on the new Iraq mortality study, the Iraq Family Health Survey, that I blogged about last night:

I think that this new article in the NEJM is a good addition to the discussion. It is good for Iraqis, it is good for science, it is good for promoting peace.

1) There is far more in common in the results than appears at first glance.

The NEJM article found a doubling of mortality after the invasion, we found a 2.4 fold increase. They found a CMR of 3/1000/yr. before and 6 after but thought they were missing almost 1/2 the deaths. We found a CMR of 5 before and 13 after….thus we actually agree roughly on the number of excess deaths. The big difference is that we found almost all the increase from violence, they found 1/3 the increase from violence.

The other odd items (family size, refusal rates, absentee household rates, fraction of deaths from infectous diseases and car accidents…) are strikingly similar.

IBC adds to their estimate for months after a given date; back at the end of June 2006, IBC estimated 41,000 deaths (my notes suggest 38,475 to 42,889 on June 24, 2006). This new estimate is 4 times the “widely accepted” number of that moment, our estimate was 12 times higher. Both studies suggest things are far worse than our leaders have reported.

2) There are reasons to suspect that the NEJM data had an under-reporting of violent deaths.

The death rate they recorded for before the invasion (and after) was very low….lower than neighboring countries and 1/3 of what WHO said the death rate was for Iraq back in 2002.

The last time this group (COSIT) did a mortality survey like this they also found a very low crude death rate and when they revisited the exact same homes a second time and just asked about child deaths, they recorded almost twice as many. Thus, the past record suggests people do not want to report deaths to these government employees.

We confirmed our deaths with death certificates, they did not. As the NEJM study’s interviewers worked for one side in this conflict, it is likely that people would be unwilling to admit violent deaths to the study workers.

They roughly found a steady rate of violence from 2003 - 2006. Baghdad morgue data, Najaf burial data, Pentagon attack data, and our data all show a dramatic increase over 2005 and 2006.

Finally, their data suggests 1/6th of deaths over the occupation through 6/06 were from violence. Our data suggest a majority of deaths were from violence. All graveyard reports I have heard are consistent with our results.

I hope these comments are helpful. I hope people in the press will visit a few  graveyards/morgues/hospitals and decide if 1/6th or over 1/2 of the deaths during the period 2003-06.

Best regards,

Les Roberts

5 comments January 10th, 2008

Action Opportunity for California Residents: Get health professionals out of interrogations!

This is an urgent opportunity for action for residents of California who are concerned about the role of psychologists and other health professionals in torture and abuse of U.S. detainees.

A broad coalition of health, human rights, and legal organizations in California are working to encourage the State of California to:

Notify all state-licensed health professionals of their legal and professional obligations not to participate in torture.

Notify them that participants in torture may be subject to prosecution.

Request that the U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA remove all California-licensed health professionals, including psychologists, from participating in prisoner interrogations.

If you would like to know more about this initiative, or sign a related online petition, go to the following web page, posted by the American Friends Service Committee:

http://www.afsc-pswro.org/crm/licensingpetition.php?

The California State Senate will be holding a hearing on Monday afternoon, Jan. 14th, on a proposed resolution on this matter. Contact the California State Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development, at 916-651-4104, for more information about that resolution and hearing.

Daily Kos blogger Valtin has more information on this. Go read his post. From it I reproduce the actual bill:

AUTHORS COPY
10/15/07 08:1OAM
58048 RN 07 29989 PAGE 1
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST
as introduced, Ridley-Thomas.

General Subject: Health professionals: torture.

This measure would request all relevant California agencies to notify
California-licensed health professionals about their professional obligations under international law relating to torture and the treatment of detainees, as specified, and to also notify those professionals that those who participate in torture, among other forms of treatment, may be subject to prosecution. In addition, the measure would request the United States Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to remove all California-licensed health professionals from participating in prisoner and detainee interrogations

Fiscal committee: yes.

WHEREAS, Health professionals licensed in California, including, but not limited to, physicians, osteopaths, psychologists, psychiatric workers, and nurses, have and continue to serve nobly and honorably in the armed services of the United States; and

WHEREAS, United States Army regulations and the War Crimes Act and, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) require that all military personnel report and not engage in acts of abuse or torture; and

WHEREAS, CAT defines the term “torture” as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, 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”; and

WHEREAS, In 2002, the United States Department of Justice reinterpreted national and international law related to the treatment of prisoners of war in a manner that purported to justify long-prohibited interrogation methods and treatment of detainees; and

WHEREAS, Physicians and other medical personnel and psychologists serving in noncombat roles are bound by international law and professional ethics to care for enemy prisoners and to report any evidence of coercion, or abuse of detainees; and

WHEREAS, The World Medical Association (WMA) issued guidelines stating that physicians shall not use nor allow to be used their medical knowledge or skills, or health information specific to individuals, to facilitate or otherwise aid any interrogation, legal or illegal; and

WHEREAS, The guidelines issued by the WMA also state that physicians shall not participate in or facilitate torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading procedures of prisoners or detainees in any situations; and

WHEREAS, The American Medical Association’s (AMA) ethical policy prohibits physicians from conducting or directly participating in an interrogation and from monitoring interrogations with the intention of intervening; and

WHEREAS, AMA policy also states that “(t)orture refers to the deliberate, systematic or wanton administration of cruel, inhumane > and degrading treatments or punishments during imprisonment or detainment. Physicians must oppose and must not participate in torture for any reason … Physicians should help provide support for victims of torture and, whenever possible, strive to change the situation in which torture is practiced or the potential for torture is great”; and

WHEREAS, In May 2006, the American Psychiatric Association stated that psychiatrists should not “participate directly in the interrogation of persons held in custody by military or civilian investigative or law enforcement authorities, whether in the United States or elsewhere,” and that “psychiatrists should not participate in, or otherwise assist or facilitate, the commission of torture of any person. Psychiatrists who become aware that torture has occurred, is occurring, or has been planned must report it promptly to a person or persons in a position to take corrective action”; and

WHEREAS, In August 2006, the American Psychological Association stated ___ that “psychologists shall not knowingly participate in any procedure in which torture ___ or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment is used or threatened” and that “should torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment evolve during a procedure where a psychologist is present, the psychologist shall attempt to intervene to stop such behavior, and failing that exit the procedure”; and

WHEREAS, In June 2005, the House of Delegates of the American Nurses Association issued a resolution stating all of the following: “prisoners and detainees have the right to health care and humane treatment”; “registered nurses shall not voluntarily participate in any deliberate infliction of physical or mental suffering”; “registered nurses who have knowledge of ill- treatment of any individuals including detainees and prisoners must take appropriate action to safeguard the rights of that individual”; “the American Nurses Association shall condemn interrogation procedures that are harmful to mental and physical health”; “the American Nurses Association shall advocate for nondiscriminatory access to health care for wounded military and paramilitary personnel and prisoners of war”; and “the American Nurses Association shall counsel and support nurses who speak out about acts of torture and abuse”; and

WHEREAS, In March 2005, the California Medical Association stated that it “condemns any participation in, cooperation with, or failure to report by physicians and other health professionals the mental or physical abuse, sexual degradation, or torture of prisoners or detainees”; and

WHEREAS, In November 2004, the American Public Health Association stated that it “condemns any participation in, cooperation with, or failure to report by health professionals the mental or physical abuse, sexual degradation, or torture of prisoners or detainees:’ that it “urges health professionals to report abuse or torture of prisoners and detainees;’ and that it “supports the rights of health workers to be protected from retribution for refusing to participate or cooperate in abuse or torture in military settings”; and

WHEREAS, The United States military medical system in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other United States operated foreign military prisons failed to protect detainees’ rights to medical treatment, failed to prevent disclosure of confidential medical information to interrogators and others, failed to promptly report injuries or deaths caused by beatings, failed to report acts of psychological and sexual degradation, and sometimes collaborated with abusive interrogators and guards; and

WHEREAS, Current United States Department of Defense guidelines authorize the participation of certain military health personnel, especially psychologists, in the interrogation of detainees as members of “Behavioral Science Consulting Teams” in violation of professional ethics. These guidelines also permit the use of confidential clinical information from medical records to aid in interrogations and

WHEREAS, Evidence in the public record indicates that military psychologists participated in the design and implementation of psychologically abusive interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, and elsewhere, including sleep deprivation, long-term isolation, sexual and cultural humiliation, forced nudity, induced hypothermia and other temperature extremes, stress positions, sensory bombardment, manipulation of phobias, force-feeding hunger strikers, and more; and

WHEREAS, Published reports indicate that the so-called “enhanced interrogation methods” of the Central Intelligence Agency reportedly include similar abusive methods and that agency psychologists may have assisted in their development; and

WHEREAS, Medical and psychological studies and clinical experience show that these abuses can cause severe or serious mental pain and suffering in their victims, and therefore may violate the “torture” and “cruel and inhuman treatment” provisions of CAT and the United States War Crimes Act, as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2006; and

WHEREAS, The United States Department of Defense has failed to oversee the ethical conduct of California-licensed health professionals related to torture; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate and the Assembly of the State of California, jointly, That the Legislature hereby requests all relevant California agencies, including, but not limited to, the Board of Behavioral Sciences, the Dental Board of California, the Medical Board of California, the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, the California State Board of Pharmacy, the Physician Assistant Committee of the Medical Board of California, the California Board of Pediatric Medicine, the Board of vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians, the Board of Psychology, and the Board of Registered Nursing, to notify California-licensed health professionals via newsletter, email, and Web site about their professional obligations under international law, specifically Common Article HI of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the amended War Crimes Act, which prohibit the torture of and the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment of detainees in United States custody; and be it further __

Resolved, That the Legislature hereby requests all relevant California agencies ___ to notify health professionals licensed in California that those who participate in torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment may one day be subject to prosecution; and be it further

Resolved. That the Legislature hereby requests the United States Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to remove all California-licensed health professionals, including, but not limited to, physicians and psychologists, from participating in any way in prisoner and detainee interrogations, in view of their respective ethical obligations, the record of abusive interrogation practices, and the Legislature’s interest in protecting California health professionals from the risk of criminal liability; and be it further

Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate transmit copies of this resolution to the United States Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and all relevant California agencies, including, but not limited to, the Board of Behavioral Sciences, the Dental Board of California. the Medical Board of California, the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, the California State Board of Pharmacy, the Physician Assistant Committee of the Medical Board of California, the California Board of Pediatric Medicine, the Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians, the Board of Psychology, and the Board of Registered Nursing.

The American Psychological Association is working to weaken this bill to meaninglessness. It is up to concerned health providers in California to organize to see that doesn’t happen.

3 comments January 10th, 2008