more things that won't get investigated

[solarbird]

Heavily-redacted papers have indicated for some time that the Bush administration's torture regime - which Mr. Obama refuses to investigate or allow to be investigated - conducted experiments on human subjects to improve torture methods. Such experimentation is, of course, quite illegal.

Physicians for Human Rights (SourceWatch report here) have released this white paper indicating that "Doctors, psychologists and other professionals... turned the detainees into research subjects," and "engaged in forms of human research and experimentation in violation of medical ethics and domestic and international law" (New York Times, which covers the report but continues the "enhanced interrogations" misnomer. The editorial is somewhat better).

Research included how to extend waterboarding sessions over much longer periods of time (some subjects were waterboarded dozens and even hundreds of times), methods to gauge susceptibility to severe pain, in order to see whether more torture methods could be applied simultaneously to greater effect, and research on how to extend sleep depravation without killing the torture subject.

Andrew Sullivan wants to know many things - where was the research conducted, by whom, and so on - but notes, "we will never find out from the Obama administration. They have been as diligent in protecting the government's record of torture as Bush and Cheney were. That kind of accountability and transparency is not change Obama ever believed in." Indeed. Glenn Greenwald notes that Mr. Obama is "not only protecting repugnant crimes and the criminals who committed them, but also ensuring that they will occur again... by so vigilantly protecting Bush crimes from investigation and refusing to apply the law, Obama significantly increases the chances that should he break the law... he, too, will be bestowed with imperial immunity for his actions. It's a never-ending, mutually beneficial agreement among Presidents and their parties to agree to place Presidents above the law."

Please remember to enjoy the effects of that power, Democrats, when the next Republican takes office.

I'd say someone should be asking Mr. Sullivan's questions, but, well, the DC press corps is too busy hanging out at parties with the friends whose exploits they pretend to cover, and making up reasons why this doesn't violate journalistic ethics.

These are the "good guys" now. Doesn't that just make you sick?

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i am dubious as to whether the new procedures constituted "research", in that they appear not to have been done at the physician's design or with the intent of answering medical or pseudoscientific questions ("what effect does longer waterboarding have?"). the physicians seem to have been there to add a layer of "respectability" or perhaps even "reviveability" and to be in a position similar to those who administer the fatal drugs at legal death penalties, at worst (btw this is condemned by the ama). that doesn't make them mengele, but it is certainly not ethical research according to current standards (notably the agreement of helsinki).

so anyway i don't expect the gummint to investigate it, but i kind of think the ama will. not that this will satisfy anyone outside the medical community, but it'll mean something in there.

it's kind of like the stanford prison experiment gone real :(

[maellenkleth]

Sometime over tea when we are both feeling solid I'll tell you about my experience on the receiving end at SERE. Nightmare stuff, that. This whole topic brings me to tears.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

The "torture issue" is one of the major places Obama and I diverge. To hear that these poor people were also victims of medical experimentation makes me think about the Tuskegee (Black) Airmen Syphilis Experiment.

Apparently we do not learn, and I fear that will be our undoing.