Psyche, Science, and Society

British blast porn at Shia prisoner

According to this report of abuse of a Mahdi Army commander, the British are fully equal to their “Coalition” partners, the Americans, in abusing detainees. So much for the “the British have learned from their long colonial history how to do it right” claims:

Iraq abuse claims: British troops ‘made Muslim commander hear porn videos’

· New abuse claims against soldiers in Iraq
· Detainee ’spent months in solitary confinement’

By Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian,

British soldiers forced a Shia militia commander to listen to pornographic videos, deprived him of sleep, repeatedly beat him, and kept him in solitary confinement for more than five months, according to fresh damning allegations against the conduct of UK troops in Basra.

A detailed account of the latest claims of unlawful treatment by British soldiers are contained in a 20-page witness statement, seen by the Guardian, of Ahmed Jawad al-Fartoosi, a leader of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi army. The Ministry of Defence said yesterday that the military police were investigating the allegations. Fartoosi was detained for more than two years, including nearly six months in solitary confinement. He was arrested in his Basra home in September 2005 and released late last year after British forces agreed to an Iraqi-sponsored deal with the militia.

He says he was beaten with rifle butts and blindfolded before he was put in a tank. For 12 hours he and his fellow detainees given no food and were prevented from going to the toilet.

He says he was taken to the British base at Shaibah, on the outskirts of Basra, where he spent 72 days in solitary confinement in a small cell with no ventilation, though he says he was provided with three cooked meals a day. On the third or fourth night, he says, soldiers brought a laptop and placed it on a window sill just outside his cell.

“After a short period of conversation in English it became clear to me that the DVD was showing porn. It was playing at the loudest possible volume. Thereafter for the next month the porn movies were played all night.” He says soldiers left porn magazines for him to see by the sinks and toilets. “It was very humiliating for me to be treated in this way by the British army. If they expected me to give in to my basic instincts they did not realise that I am not that kind of man … I was determined not be sexually aroused by this but it made me physically sick.”

Fartoosi says he was deprived of sleep. When he was taken to be interrogated, he says, a blanket was thrown over his head. He adds: “I was spun about for between 15-30 minutes to disorientate me.”

In April 2007 Fartoosi was driven to Basra airport, now the only British base in Basra. He says he was accused of killing a member of Basra council. He was repeatedly told he was being detained because he was “leader of the Mahdi army”, and that the evidence against him was secret.

He was eventually released, as a result of papers signed by the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, he learned later. Now living in Lebanon, according to his lawyers, Fartoosi identifies a number of British soldiers, including a senior officer, in his witness statement.

Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, has written to Des Browne, the defence secretary, saying Fartoosi is entitled to substantial damages for false imprisonment and human rights violations.

Shiner said yesterday: “The use of sensory bombardment and, in particular, the pornographic films to attempt to break down this male Muslim shows that the UK were doing exactly the same as the US, using coercive interrogation techniques developed in the 1960s and especially in Northern Ireland, and then refined to fit the so-called ‘war on terror’.”

The MoD said in a statement: “Mr Al-Fartoosi, who was a senior commander in the Jaish al-Mahdi militia in Basra, was interned for the protection of UK forces and Iraqi nationals. We are not aware of any allegations of abuse being made by him during his internment. Claims are now being investigated by the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police.”

Add comment August 2nd, 2008

McCain finds mass killing funny

McCain appears to have fine qualifications to be US President. He can joke about the mass murder of others:

McCain jokes about killing Iranians with cigarettes

U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who once sang in jest about bombing Iran, on Tuesday reacted to a report of rising U.S. cigarette exports to the country by saying it may be “a way of killing ‘em.”

McCain, known for acerbic comments and for sometimes firing verbally from the hip, was responding to a report that U.S. exports to Iran rose tenfold during President George W. Bush’s term in office despite hostility between the two states.

A rise in cigarette sales was a big part of that, according to an Associated Press analysis of seven years of U.S. trade figures.

“Maybe that’s a way of killing ‘em,” McCain said to reporters during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh. “I meant that as a joke, as a person who hasn’t had a cigarette in 28 years, 29 years,” he added, laughing.

He declined further comment on the report.

At a campaign meeting in South Carolina last year the Arizona senator, asked if there is a plan to attack Iran, began his answer with a variation on the lyrics of a well-known pop song, Barbara Ann.

“You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran?” he said, then sang “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” before discussing what he considered Iran’s serious threat to Israel and international security.

Tension is high between the two countries over Iran’s nuclear program, which Washington says is aimed at making an atomic bomb but Tehran says is for generating energy. There has been media speculation of a possible U.S. or Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Add comment July 9th, 2008

American “justice,” NOT, says UN Special Rapporteu

The UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions has denounced many aspects of US justice, both at home, at Guantanamo, and in occupied Iraq Afghanistan:

UN envoy rips US violations in Iraq, Guantanamo, Afghanistan
Rapporteur condemns rights abuses at home, too

By Thalif Deen

Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS: After a two-week fact-finding tour of US prison and detention facilities, a UN human rights investigator has blasted the administration of President George W. Bush for a rash of shortcomings in the country’s flawed justice system and continued violations of the rule of law.

Unleashing a stinging barrage of attacks, Professor Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary and arbitrary executions, singles out the existence of racism in the application of the death penalty in the United States, and the lack of transparency in the deaths of prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility housing suspected terrorists.

Alston, a professor at the New York University School of Law and an outspoken critic of human rights abuses worldwide, also complains about the non-availability of information on civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the refusal of the US Justice Department to prosecute private security contractors who commit unlawful killings.

During his 14-day tour of the United States at the invitation of the administration, he met with federal and state officials, judges and civil society groups in New York, Washington DC, Alabama and Texas.

Alston was particularly critical of the state of Texas which has refused to review the cases of foreign nationals on death row, most of whom had been deprived of the right to consular assistance from their home countries.

He specifically chose to visit Alabama “because it has the highest per capita rate of executions in the United States, and Texas because it has the largest number of executions and prisoners on death row.” Still, 129 individuals waiting on death row have been exonerated across the United States, since 1973, and the number continues to grow.

“Indeed, while I was in Texas, the conviction of yet another person on death row was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals,” Alston said.

While in this case DNA testing ultimately prevented the execution of an innocent man, Alston said, others may have been less fortunate.

“In Texas, I met a range of officials and others who acknowledged that innocent people might have been executed,” he said, adding the problem is that a criminal justice system with recognized flaws that the government refuses to address will always be capable of mistakes.

In his report, Alston points out that studies across the United States also suggest racial disparities in the application of the death penalty. In particular, many studies suggest that a defendant is more likely to receive the death penalty when the victim is white, and some studies also suggest that a defendant is more likely to receive the death penalty if he is African American.

“When I raised this issue with federal and state government officials, I was met with indifference or flat denial,” said Alston, who noted that many officials wrote off the results of studies showing racial disparity as being biased because they were written by researchers with anti-death penalty views. “Given what is at stake, there is a need for governments at both the state and federal levels to revisit systematically the concerns about continuing racial disparities,” he added.

Meanwhile, to date, just six of the “enemy combatants” detained at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been charged with capital offenses under the Military Commissions Act (MCA). They are being tried before military commissions on war crimes charges, and if convicted, face the death penalty. According to Alston, the United States has an obligation to provide fair trials which afford all essential judicial guarantees.

“The fundamental principles of a fair trial may never be derogated from. But the text of the MCA, which provides the rules which govern the trials, and the experiences of those with whom I met during my mission involved in the trial process to date, indicate clearly that these trials utterly fail to meet the basic due process standards required for a fair trial under international humanitarian and human rights law,” he said.

There have been five reported deaths of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in 2006-07. Four were classified as suicides, and one was attributed to cancer. In the custodial environment, Alston said, a state has a heightened duty and capacity to ensure and respect the right to life. As a result, there is a rebuttable presumption of state responsibility whether through acts of commission or omission in cases of custodial death. The state has an obligation to investigate the deaths, and publicly report on the findings and the evidence upon which the findings are based.

“But the Department of Defense has provided little public information about the causes or circumstance of any of these deaths,” he said.

While it has been reported that autopsies were conducted in each case, the results have not been made public or even provided to the families of the deceased men, he added. It was also reported that the Naval Criminal Investigative Services is conducting investigations into each of the deaths. But over two years since the first deaths, no results of investigations have been released.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the US military is considered an occupying power, Alston points to a string of human rights abuses and violations of the rule of law.

The “troublingly opaque character of the US military justice system is well illustrated by a case described to me by witnesses and investigators when I visited Afghanistan,” he said. On March 4, 2007, he recalled, US Marines responded to a suicide attack on their convoy, in which one soldier was wounded, by killing 19 people and wounding many others in the space of a 10-mile retreat.

“I asked the regional commander in Afghanistan what follow-up had occurred. He could not tell me and explained that his unit had just arrived in Afghanistan and that accountability for incidents involving the previous unit was its responsibility and that it had taken all the relevant files when it left the country,” Alston said.

In fact, a Court of Inquiry into the incident proceeded in North Carolina: “Shortly after I returned from Afghanistan, the US military released a short statement on this incident indicating that the commander of US Marine Corps Forces Central Command had conducted a thorough review of the report of a Court of Inquiry and had determined that the soldiers had acted appropriately and in accordance with the rules of engagement and tactics, techniques and procedures in place at the time in response to a complex attack.” Unsurprisingly, he added, this conclusive and unsubstantiated response to such a serious incident was met with dismay in Afghanistan.

“Afghans and Americans have a right to ask on what basis this conclusion was reached,” Alston said. “But all of the documents produced by the Court of Inquiry have remained classified. The record of proceedings has not been released. The 12,000 page report of the Court of Inquiry including recommendations and factual findings has not been released.”

The US government has even disregarded the existing regulation stating that the convening authority should ensure that an executive summary of the report be made public in order to inform government officials, the legislative branch, the media, and the next of kin of the victims of the investigations findings and recommendations.

“Whether or not the decision not to initiate courts-martial was justified, the manner in which the military justice system has operated in this case is entirely inconsistent with principles of public accountability and transparency,” Alston declared.

Regarding killings by private security contractors, he said: “It’s the [US] Department of Justice’s job to prosecute private security contractors who commit unlawful killings, but it has done next to nothing.”

1 comment July 3rd, 2008

Bob Herbert on US torture

Bob Herbert writes in the New York Times of the recently releases Physicians for Human Rights report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US:

All Too Human

By Bob Herbert

Thursday was the 21st anniversary of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

It was also the same day that two Bush administration lawyers appeared before a House subcommittee to answer questions about their roles in providing the legal framework for harsh interrogation techniques that inevitably rose to the level of torture and shamed the U.S. before the rest of the world.

The lawyers, both former Justice Department officials, were David Addington, who is now Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There is no danger of either being enshrined as heroes in the history books of the future.

For most Americans, torture is something remote, abstract, reprehensible, but in the eyes of some, perhaps necessary - when the bomb is ticking, for example, or when interrogators are trying to get information from terrorists willing to kill Americans in huge numbers.

Reality offers something much different. We saw the hideous photos from Abu Ghraib. And now the Nobel Prize-winning organization Physicians for Human Rights has released a report, called “Broken Laws, Broken Lives,” that puts an appropriately horrifying face on a practice that is so fundamentally evil that it cannot co-exist with the idea of a just and humane society.

The report profiles 11 detainees who were tortured while in U.S. custody and then released - their lives ruined - without ever having been charged with a crime or told why they were detained. All of the prisoners were men, and all were badly beaten. One was sodomized with a broomstick, the report said, and forced by his interrogators to howl like a dog while a soldier urinated on him.

He fainted, the report said, “after a soldier stepped on his genitals.”

Officials at Physicians for Human Rights said extensive medical and psychological examinations were conducted - and in two cases prior medical records were consulted - to help corroborate the testimony of the detainees. The organization has a long and credible history of documenting such abuses.

Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights, said: “In doing the evaluations, we used international standards, medical assessments of torture and ill treatment, and meticulously assessed physical and psychological evidence of torture and ill treatment, and the long-term physical and mental health consequences.”

The most effective element of the report is the way in which it takes torture out of the realm of the abstract to show not just the horror and cruelty of the torture itself, but the way in which it absolutely devastates the body, soul and psyche of its victims.

The detainees profiled in the report were abused at facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Three said they had been subjected to electric shocks. One said he was stabbed in the cheek with a screwdriver and hit in the head and in the jaw with a rifle.

In an example of how medical evidence was used to back up a detainee’s account, the report said scarring on one of the prisoner’s thumbs “was highly consistent with the scarring caused by electric shock.”

In addition to the physical mistreatment, the detainees reported that various gruesome forms of humiliation, including sexual humiliation, were pervasive. They said men were paraded nude in front of female soldiers, forced to watch pornography, and forced to disrobe before female interrogators.

The sheer number of different ways in which detainees were reported to have been abused was mind-boggling. They were deprived of sleep, forced to endure extremes of heat and cold, chained in crouching positions for 18 to 20 hours at a time, told that their female relatives would be raped, that they themselves would be killed, and on and on. All to no good end.

The ostensible purpose of mistreating prisoners is to inflict pain and induce disorientation and despair, creating so much agony that the prisoners give up valuable intelligence in order to end the suffering. But torture is not an interrogation technique; it’s a criminal attack on a human being.

What the report makes clear is that once the green light is given to torture, the guaranteed result is an ever-widening landscape of broken bodies, ruined lives and profound shame to all involved.

Nearly all of the detainees profiled in the report have experienced excruciating psychological difficulties since being released. Several said that they had contemplated suicide. As one put it: “No sorrow can be compared to my torture experience in jail. That is the reason for my sadness.”

Congress and the public do not know nearly enough about the nation’s post-Sept. 11 interrogation practices. When something as foul as torture is on the table, there is a tendency to avert one’s eyes from the most painful truths.

It’s a tendency we should resist.

Add comment July 1st, 2008

New report documents medical consequences of and medical complicity with US torture

Physicians for Human Rights has just released an extremely important new report — Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact — involving extensive medical and psychological examinations of 11 detainees released from US detention facilities in Iraq and at Guantanamo. The report provides a detailed account of the brutality involved throughout the US detention system in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at Guantanamo.

These detainees were all brutally beaten and humiliated. All subjected to isolation. Several were sodomized while others were subjected to electric shocks. All the other “techniques” from the panoply of US torture techniques are represented here, including sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; being subjected to loud noise; and “stress positions,”  including being suspended from the ceiling.

The report provides both medical evidence supporting torture claims, and evidence of the severe long-term effects of the abuse. The medical and psychological examinations in most cases substantiated detainees’ claims of abuse. Where the medical evidence was equivocal, it was largely due to types of injuries, e.g., soft tissue injuries, that would have healed in the meantime.

The report also provides abundant documentation of the extent of medical and psychological complicity with the torture. In no case did medical personnel report abuse. In many cases they patched up detainees to facilitate additional torture:

“[W]hen the doctor had finished treating him, “I heard the doctor say ‘continue’ (to the interrogators)”, p. 21.

The cases where medical personnel were “helpful” are just as disturbing:

““[The doctor] helped me … he told the soldiers, ‘If you go on torturing him in this way, he will die’,” p. 85.

Not surprisingly, detainees did not report psychologists consulting in interrogations (SOP called for these psychologists to not identify themselves, an interesting ethical issue in itself). But treatment psychologists were perceived to be collaborating with interrogators:

“Haydar indicated, however, that he suspected the psychologists shared information with the soldiers,” p. 48.

And:

“While in Camp Delta, Youssef asked to speak with a psychologist because he was distressed, and the two spoke about him missing his family and his feelings of sadness. Although Youssef believed the meeting was confidential, he stated that shortly after the psychologist left, he was brought to an interrogator who immediately brought up information connected to his disclosures, such as telling him that he was going to stay at Guantánamo for the rest of his life and discussing his family (“Don’t you want to leave this place and get back together with your family?”…If you do as we tell you, you can get back to your family.”). He stated, “I figured out the reason they had called me for the interrogation was because the psychologist had told them about the meeting.” He stated, “They were stressing these fears very much.” Following this interrogation, Youssef reported that he was moved to the “worst” section in Camp Delta, where he was not allowed to have a blanket or a mattress,” p. 58

After the publication of this report, any claim that psychologists helped keep detentions or interrogations “safe or ethical” are completely unsupportable. Psychologists, and indeed, all medical personnel, regardless of their personal characteristics, were simply part of the apparatus of abuse. As Maj. Gen. Taguba — who was driven out of the military because of his Abu Ghraib investigation– states in his preface:

“And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.”

If we do not stop this complicity, we thereby ourselves become complicit. After this report, we can no longer say “We didn’t know. We thought they were helping.”

Below are two PHR Press Releases and the Preface by Gen. Taguba.

Medical Evidence Supports Detainees’ Accounts of Torture in US Custody

Cambridge, Mass. (PRWEB) June 18, 2008 — Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has published a landmark report documenting medical evidence of torture and ill-treatment inflicted on 11 men detained at US facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, who were never charged with any crime. The physical and psychological evaluation of the detainees and documentation of the crimes are based on internationally accepted standards for clinical assessment of torture claims. The report also details the severe physical and psychological pain and long-term disability that has resulted from abusive and unlawful US interrogation practices.

“Rigorous clinical evaluations confirm the enormous and enduring toll of agony and anguish inflicted for months by US personnel on eleven men who were detained without any charge or explanation,” stated PHR President Leonard Rubenstein. “Their first-hand accounts, now confirmed by medical and psychological examinations, take us behind the photographs to write a missing chapter of America’s descent into the shameful practice and official policy of systematic torture.”

Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact documents practices used to bring about excruciating pain, terror, humiliation, and shame for months on end. These practices included, but were not limited to:

• Suspensions and other stress positions;
• Routine isolation;
• Sleep deprivation combined with sensory bombardment and temperature extremes;
• Sexual humiliation and forced nakedness;
• Sodomy;
• Beatings;
• Denial of medical care;
• Electric shock;
• Involuntary medication; and
• Threats to their lives and families.

In the foreword to the report, Maj. General Antonio Taguba (USA-Ret.), who led the U.S. Army’s investigation into the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal, wrote: “After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

“Ending the use of torture, while essential, is not enough. The United States government must make this right. Those responsible for these abuses must help heal the grievous harm inflicted in our name,” said PHR CEO Frank Donaghue. “PHR is calling for full investigation, accountability, an official apology, and reparations, including medical and psychological treatment for the survivors.”

And:

US Torture of Detainees Caused Severe Pain, Long-Term Suffering

Cambridge, Mass. (PRWEB) June 18, 2008 - A team of doctors and psychologists convened by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) to conduct intensive clinical evaluations of 11 former detainees held in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay has found that these men suffered torture and ill-treatment by US personnel, which resulted in severe pain and long-term disability. The men were ultimately released from US custody without charge or explanation.

“The horrific consequences of US detention and interrogation policy are indelibly written on the bodies and minds of the former detainees in scars, debilitating injuries, humiliating memories and haunting nightmares,” states Dr. Allen Keller, Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture and a contributor to PHR’s report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact. “Physical and psychological evidence clearly supports the detainees’ first-hand accounts of cruelty, inhuman treatment, degradation, and torture.”

“The poignant case studies focus on the profound and lasting consequences of cruelty at the hands of US personnel,” said Farnoosh Hashemian, MPH, PHR Research Associate and lead author of the report. “The detainees suffer permanent hearing loss, persistent and debilitating pain in limbs and joints, major depressive disorder, severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorders, such as panic attacks.”

One Iraqi detainee, Laith, recounted that during his initial detention in an unknown prison, he was brutally beaten and kicked until he lost consciousness. In Abu Ghraib, he was kept naked for almost a month in a variety of stress positions in isolation in a small, dark cell wearing soiled underwear and was subjected to lengthy interrogations.

On one occasion he was brought to see his brother who was bleeding, naked, and humiliated. The most painful experience for Laith was the threat of rape of his mother and sisters: “They were saying, ‘you will hear your mothers and sisters when we are raping them [here].’”

These men also continue to endure profound disruptions in their social and family lives. Many live with an abiding sense of shame caused by the loss of their ability to protect and provide for their families. And several men told medical evaluators of their desire to relocate, stemming from their loss of a sense of safety, since they had been arrested without charge or to avoid the frequent reminders of their harrowing detention experiences.

The report calls for full investigation and remedies, including accountability for war crimes, and reparation, such as compensation, medical care and psycho-social services.

Here is the preface :

Preface

by General AntonioTaguba [Ret]

This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individual’s lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.

The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full-scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted —both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.

In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

The former detainees in this report, each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life, require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.

But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.

And so do the American people.

Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.)

Maj. General Taguba led the US Army’s official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and testified before Congress on his findings in May, 2004.

Go download and read the report here.

4 comments June 18th, 2008

Richrd Clarke: Don’t let warmongerers back into polite society

As regular readers know, I have been calling for accountability for those who authorized and directed US torture. Former antiterrorism official Richard Clarke has a similar idea regarding those responsible for the Iraq war. He calls for accountability for those who launched this disastrous war based upon lies.

Think Progress has the transcript. Here is the critical portion:

CLARKE: Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way.

Now, I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grieviously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives.

Add comment June 8th, 2008

A drugged army is a more reliable army

Meanwhile, te soldiers who are in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking psychoactive drugs, primarily antidepressants and sleeping medications, in order to cope:

Data contained in the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials say.

At a Pentagon that keeps statistics on just about everything, there is no central clearinghouse for this kind of data, and the Army hasn’t consistently asked about prescription-drug use, which makes it difficult to track. Given the traditional stigma associated with soldiers seeking mental help, the survey, released in March, probably underestimates antidepressant use. But if the Army numbers reflect those of other services — the Army has by far the most troops deployed to the war zones — about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were on such medications last fall. The Army estimates that authorized drug use splits roughly fifty-fifty between troops taking antidepressants — largely the class of drugs that includes Prozac and Zoloft — and those taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien.

The extensive use of psychotropics may enable the military to keep more troops in the field longer, at the cost of more mental disorders long-term:

“No magic pill can erase the image of a best friend’s shattered body or assuage the guilt from having traded duty with him that day,” says Combat Stress Injury, a 2006 medical book edited by Charles Figley and William Nash that details how troops can be helped by such drugs. “Medication can, however, alleviate some debilitating and nearly intolerable symptoms of combat and operational stress injuries” and “help restore personnel to full functioning capacity.”

Which means that any drug that keeps a soldier deployed and fighting also saves money on training and deploying replacements. But there is a downside: the number of soldiers requiring long-term mental-health services soars with repeated deployments and lengthy combat tours. If troops do not get sufficient time away from combat — both while in theater and during the “dwell time” at home before they go back to war — it’s possible that antidepressants and sleeping aids will be used to stretch an already taut force even tighter. “This is what happens when you try to fight a long war with an army that wasn’t designed for a long war,” says Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan Administration.

Not everyone is fooled:

Military families wonder about the change, according to Joyce Raezer of the private National Military Family Association. “Boy, it’s really nice to have these drugs,” she recalls a military doctor saying, “so we can keep people deployed.” And professionals have their doubts. “Are we trying to bandage up what is essentially an insufficient fighting force?” asks Dr. Frank Ochberg, a veteran psychiatrist and founding board member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Add comment June 8th, 2008

Self-mutilation as a life preservative: ‘Anything Not to Go Back’

Those of us old enough to remember Vietnam recall the creativity of men avoiding the draft. Today we see similar signs of a war gone badly wrong, as Newsweek reports:

‘Anything Not to Go Back’

By Tony Dokoupil

As an internist at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, Dr. Stephanie Santos is used to finding odd things in people’s stomachs. So last spring when a young man, identifying himself as an Iraq-bound soldier, said he had accidentally swallowed a pen at the bus station, she believed him. That is, until she found a second pen. It read 1-800-GREYHOUND. Last summer, according to published reports, a 20-year-old Bronx soldier paid a hit man $500 to shoot him in the knee on the day he was scheduled to return to Iraq. The year before that, a 24-year-old specialist from Washington state escaped a second tour of duty, according to his sister, by strapping on a backpack full of tools and leaping off the roof of his house, injuring his spine.

Such cases of self-harm are a “rising trend” that military doctors are watching closely, says Col. Kathy Platoni, an Army Reserve psychologist who has worked with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. “There are some soldiers who will do almost anything not to go back,” she says. Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army’s top psychologist, agrees that we could see an uptick in intentional injuries as more U.S. soldiers serve long, repeated combat tours, “but we just don’t have good, hard data on it.” Intentional- injury cases are hard to identify, and even harder to prosecute. Fewer than 21 soldiers have been punitively discharged for self-harm since 2003, according to the military. What’s worrying, however, is that American troops committed suicide at the highest rate on record in 2007—and the factors behind self-injury are similar: combat stress and strained relationships. “It’s often the families that don’t want soldiers to return to war,” says Ritchie.

Soldiers have long used self-harm as a rip cord to avoid war. During World War I, The American Journal of Psychiatry reported “epidemics of self-inflicted injuries,” hospital wards filled with men shot in a single finger or toe, as well as cases of pulled-out teeth, punctured eardrums and slashed Achilles’ heels. Few doubt that the Korean and Vietnam wars were any different. But the current war—fought with an overtaxed volunteer Army—may be the worst. “We’re definitely concerned,” says Ritchie. “We hope they’ll talk to us rather than self-harm.”

This trend poses complex ethical issues for psychologists and other mental health professionals. What is the ethical way to “help” these soldiers: fix them up and send them back to their units; help them escape; or to treat their desire to avoid another horrifying tour as a mental illness? And who is the treater primarily responsible to? The patient or the army? Unfortunately, I see few signs of our professions grappling with these thorny issues.

Add comment June 8th, 2008

Ruth Rosen on self-censorship in the liberal media

In an article from TPM Cafe, Ruth Rosen describes her experiences as an editorial nd Op-Ed writer for the liberal San Francisco Chronicle during the run-up to the Iraq war. Despite knowing that the administration was lying, Rosen and her fellow editorialists felt constrained as to what they could say. This is one of the best descriptions of the process of self-censorship in the liberal media. The take-home point:

The truth is, even a liberal newspaper, blessed with a liberal editorial board, did not engage in truth telling. We raised some good questions, wrote about supporting the troops, but failed to describe the deception that led to the catastrophe that was unfolding right before our eyes.

Here’s the article:

Tales From Inside the Editorial Board Room

By Ruth Rosen

When I first heard about Scott McClellan’s charges that the Bush administration had lied and deceived Americans during the months and years leading up to the war, I burst into tears of happiness. No, nothing he wrote was new. And even if he still seems like a sleazy public relations expert in obfuscation, an insider was finally telling the truth, in one book.

My story is different from those who felt seriously constrained about raising questions about the administration’s obvious lies. I worked as an editorial writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, where a liberal editorial board raised serious objections to the war. And yet, in the years following 9/11, I felt editorial restraints that never allowed us to tell the whole truth about the lies and deception that led to America’s most catastrophic foreign policy disaster.

Others in the mainstream media felt far greater restraints. Jessica Yellin, a CNN journalist, for example, says she felt pressured by corporate executives at her previous network to support the Iraq War. To Anderson Cooper, she described how she and others were “under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.” On the Today Show, Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Charles Gibson also admitted feeling pressure from the Bush administration to support the war, MSNBC reported. Couric even recounted a threat from the White House Press Secretary to “block access to [the network] during the war” if she did not change the tone of her interviewing style.”

So what did I experience? An editor and an editorial board who felt that, in the absence of inside sources, we could not counter the administration’s lies.

Let me give you some examples. I was raised in a Republican family, but schooled by the great iconoclastic journalist I.F. Stone, who taught me that you can find the truth without inside sources, if only you’re willing to see beyond patriotic fervor and examine voices in the public domain that are marginalized, So, I would read national security experts who countered Donald Rumfeld’s ridiculous predictions; I would read the British, Canadian, Italian and French press; I would read the writings of experts in resource wars and weapons of mass destruction.

No, I didn’t know I was right. But I was sure that the administration was lying. And, I knew that at the very least that our editorials should be asking why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al should be believed when I had found strong evidence that they were cherry picking intelligence, and setting up their own office in the Pentagon, and acting in complete secrecy.

The rush to war drove me crazy. In the days that led up to the war, I went to my editor and told him I needed a few days unpaid leave to accept the fact that we were, in fact, going to war. In my mind’s eye, I saw a baby tied to the railroad tracks and saw the train rapidly moving toward the helpless child. I saw years of quagmire, bloodshed, and tens of thousands of deaths. I needed a few days to accept that reality before I could return to writing. He understood and allowed me to regain my professional composure.

To its credit, the editorial board raised some of the toughest questions in the mainstream media. And yet….I was the only one who didn’t believe Colin Powell’s shameful presentation at the United Nations. Why? Not because I had special insider knowledge, but like I.F. Stone, I had found credible people who could dissect his speech and found it unconvincing and unpersuasive.

When I heard Bush’s inaugural address, I heard two major lies embedded within his speech. But somehow that still wasn’t enough to accuse him of plagiarism and deception.

The truth is, even a liberal newspaper, blessed with a liberal editorial board, did not engage in truth telling. We raised some good questions, wrote about supporting the troops, but failed to describe the deception that led to the catastrophe that was unfolding right before our eyes.

While I was writing editorials, I was also publishing two weekly political columns on the op-ed page. I also felt constrained as a columnist. If I wanted to discuss this country’s desire to gain control and access over oil, I had to bump up against the accusation that I was a vulgar Marxist, rather than conversant with the reality of resource wars.

Finally, I am an historian, and I knew Iraq’s history. I also knew that the war would end in a disastrous occupation, not a liberation, and that no country, including our own, will ever tolerate occupation by a foreign nation.

This week, I sat with a former colleague from the editorial board in a café, rather than in the room where we used to make our editorial decisions. He admitted that I had been right, but even more, that even in a liberal paper, the editor and most of the board, had felt restrained, afraid of seeming unpatriotic, afraid of saying the emperor wore no clothes, afraid of not giving the President the benefit of the doubt, afraid of truth telling without access to inside sources.

You may say, “Ho Hum, even the Senate has now, after five years, come out with a report that describes (oh, so tepidly) the years of deception.

But for me, the tears flowed because I remembered all those years when I felt passionate about telling the public the truth, but was unable to do so in a mainstream, liberal, newspaper.

Add comment June 8th, 2008

Torture and the American Psyche forum audio

Thanks to Dori Smith of Talk Nation Radio, our May 3 forum — Torture and the American Psyche: Blurring the Boundaries Between Healers and Interrogators — was audio-recorded. Dori has edited the material for two hald hour shows on Talk Nation Radio. That material is now available. [NOTE: The forum was also video recorded. These videos should be available soon, on YouTube or a similar site. Stay tuned.]

For those who don’t read this blof regularly, here’s the description of the speakers:

SPEAKERS:

Eric Fair currently a divinity student at Princeton will speak from his experience as a civilian contract interrogator in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib in early 2004. He will lend his first person account to our conversation.

Leonard Rubenstein, J.D. President of Physicians for Human Rights, a Nobel Prize winning organization, is an attorney and veteran of many human rights struggles. He will speak of the role of torture in our contemporary political culture.

David Sloan-Rossiter, Ph.D. will bring his long standing interest in using a psych oana¬lytic perspective to aid communities to the role of moderator of the program. He is co-chair of the Curriculum Committee at Boston Institute for Psychotherapy and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Stephen Soldz, Ph.D. a local psychoanalyst, social activist and Professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, is one of the nation’s leaders in opposing psycholo¬gist participation in torture and abuse. He will speak to the history of that struggle in the context of the broader struggle for human rights.

Talk Nation Radio

TNR Show I contains material from the Introduction by David Sloan-Rossiter and an interspersing of material from the talks by Leonard Rubenstein (President of Physicians for Human Rights) and myself. [See Dori's description here and download mp3 here.]

TNR Show II contains the conclusion from my talk, the talk by former Iraq interrogator Eric Fair, and some discussion, including comments by Stephen Behnke, the Ethics Director of the American Psychological Association. [See Dori's description here and download mp3 here.]

Complete Talks, unedited

The Talk Nation Radio versions are selected and cleaned up. For those who would like to listen to the complete talks, Dori has kindly made available the raw recordings.

David Sloan-Rossiter Introduction and Stephen Soldz talk here.

Leonard Rubenstein talk here.

Eric Fair talk here.

The Question & Answer session is available here.

1 comment June 2nd, 2008