Psychologist Martha Davis has sent this Open Letter to the American Psychological Association President, CEO, and Ethics Director:
An Open Letter to Dr. James H. Bray, President, Dr. Norman B. Anderson, CEO, and Dr. Stephen Behnke, Director of Ethics, American Psychological Association
Dear Drs. Bray, Anderson and Behnke,
I would like you to know that today a trailer on the documentary Interrogation Psychologists can be viewed at HYPERLINK “http://www.youtube.com/user/DoctorsandDetainees Also, we have launched a web site that will provide information and videos on the complicity of health care professionals in detainee abuse. You can view it at HYPERLINK http://www.DoctorsandDetainees.com We are also developing a full-length documentary for a general audience.
I am a Division 41 [American Psychology-Law Society] member of the American Psychological Association who remains deeply troubled by the APA’s continued support for psychologist involvement in interrogations. It is a policy that puts possible benefit to national security (for which there is no evidence) above the many, serious ways that the practice violates the Ethics Code. Despite Resolutions against Torture and official statements, the APA has not disciplined psychologists involved in detainee abuse or reversed the PENS interrogation policy. This forces psychologists appalled at the policy to go to the membership, the press, and the public in hopes that someday the APA will stop making decisions that serve the C.I.A. and U.S. Department of Defense at the expense of the integrity of the profession.
It appears until now that APA officials can only make statements affirming the APA’s stand against torture, but I hope that you can tell those who will be reading this open letter whether the leadership of the APA is working to rescind the PENS interrogation policy and reform the flaws in the system that established and promulgated it.
Sincerely,
Martha Davis 
May 13th, 2009
[UPDATED: See below.]
In a completely illogical statement President Obama has decided to collude in covering up war crimes:
President Obama said Wednesday that he told government lawyers to object to a court-ordered release of additional images showing alleged abuse of detainees because the release could affect the safety of U.S. troops and “inflame anti-American opinion.”
he Defense Department was set to release hundreds of photographs showing alleged abuse of prisoners in detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the images we remember from Abu Ghraib,” the president said on the South Lawn of the White House. “But they do represent conduct that didn’t conform with the Army manual.”
Obama said the publication of the photos would not add any additional benefit to investigations being carried out into detainee abuse — and could put future inquires at risk.
“In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would further flame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger. … I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse,” Obama said.
The ACLU’s Amrit Singh,the lead attorney suing for release of the photographs described the import of this decision:
“Essentially, by withholding these photographs from public view, the Obama administration is making itself complicit in the Bush administration’s torture policies,” Singh said. “The release of these photos is absolutely essential for ensuring that justice was done … for ensuring that the public could hold its government accountable, and for ensuring that torture is not conducted in the future in the name of the American people.”
Defense Secretary Gates joined the scoundrels that used American service members as shields for the military and administration’s CYA operation:
But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that grave concerns coming from top military brass may have influenced the president’s decision.
“What’s motivated my own change of heart on this and perhaps influenced the president is that our commanders … have expressed very serious reservations about this … and that the release of these photographs will cost American lives,” Gates said.
“That’s all it took for me,” he added.
Of course, this decision is not isolated. It is just one of numerous actions by the Obama administration to cover-up much of the abuse that occurred under the previous administration. In court, the administration has moved to hide evidence from the public. It has threatened the British government with loss of intelligence cooperation, should that government seek to learn more about the torture of one its citizens, Binyam Mohammed. As Andrew Sullivan points out, Obama’s newest fans on the extreme right are thrilled: Pete Wehner and Andy McCarthy and Jonah Goldberg.
By its policy of lies, obfuscation, and cover-up the administration is adopting the torture issue as its own and guaranteeing that it won’t go away anytime soon. Rather, the torture policy will gradually be wrapped around Obama’s neck, only to strangle his efforts to chart a new direction in the relations between the US and the world.
Of course, the photos will eventually be leaked. From now on, the torture secrets will drip, drip, drip, eventually drowning the fantasy that Obama represents a fundamental break from Bush and Cheney.
Those of us who supported Obama, hoping for a radical change in respect for human rights rather have discovered yet another politician taking a radical turn toward placating the most vile forces in contemporary American. We are seeing change we must awake from.
UPDATE:
Glenn Greenwald points out that Obama is likely lying about what’s on the photos:
Obama (h/t Jim White):
Obama today: “I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the images we remember from Abu Ghraib. But they do represent conduct that didn’t conform with the Army manual.”
Editor & Publisher, September 29, 2005:
Last year a Republican senator conceded that they contained scenes of ”rape and murder” and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said they included acts that were “blatantly sadistic” . . . .
What is shown on the photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon has blocked from release? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, after viewing a large cache of unreleased images, “I mean, I looked at them last night, and they’re hard to believe.” They show acts “that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane,” he added. . . .
“‘The American public needs to understand we’re talking about rape and murder here. We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,’ Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. ‘We’re talking about rape and murder — and some very serious charges.’. . .
In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: “Some of the worse that happened that you don’t know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men … . The women were passing messages saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened.’
“Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it’s going to come out.”
Does that sound like some banal, tame, unenlightening evidence compared to the Abu Ghraib photos? As Judge Hellerstein wrote in rejecting the Bush argument — now the Obama argument — that disclosure would jeopradize the troops: ”the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed.”
May 13th, 2009