American Psychological Association and Torture

From Bryant Welch at Huffinton Post

"Military psychologists also colluded with the Justice Department to help CIA operatives circumvent the legal prohibitions against torture. Under the Justice Department definition of torture, if a detainee was sent to a psychologist for a mental health evaluation prior to interrogation it was per se evidence that the interrogator had no legal intent to torture the detainee because the referral "demonstrated concern" for the welfare of the detainee.

Most remarkably of all, this whole process occurred under a protective "ethical" seal from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychologists' largest national organization. The APA governance repeatedly rejected calls from its membership for APA to join other health organizations in declaring participation in Bush detention center interrogations unethical."

Click quotation to read whole article at original source

Senator Daniel Inouye and Torture

From Bryant Welch at Huffington Post

Inouye himself has served as an apologist for the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp (”Gitmo”) since the inception of the War on Terror. In a press briefing at the U.S. State Department, held shortly after his trip to Gitmo in February of 2002, Inouye affirmed Rumsfeld’s propagandist vision of the site, and then remarked: “Watching our men and women treat these detainees was rather impressive. They would go out of their way to be considerate. …”

From what we know now, that is true, but not in the benevolent way Inouye implied. Inouye’s comments bore a chilling similarity to Barbara Bush’s famous comments about the alleged good fortune of Katrina victims, in the Houston Astrodome. The detainees, he said, are being treated “in some ways better than we treat our people.” (R. Burns, Associated Press, 2002). And he compared the Guantanamo climate to Hawaii’s. (It is “somewhat warmer.”)

More significantly, it was Inouye who recently stripped the funding needed for closing Gitmo from a supplemental appropriations bill. This “Inouye Amendment,” threw a stick in the spokes of any U.S. movement away from the worst of global war on terror policies. In announcing the funding cut, Inouye’s press release was a remarkable illustration of Orwellian “newspeak,” ostensibly supporting the very opposite of what he was doing:"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bryant-welch/torture-psychology-and-da_b_215612.html

Read complete story here

Doctors tortured people?

"However, there is evidence that health personnel, at least some of them physicians, have been involved in interrogations. For example Col. Thomas M. Pappas, former chief of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, who was interviewed as part of the Taguba investigation [8], testified that a psychiatrist and another doctor monitored interrogations [9] at the prison and had the final say in what aspects of the interrogation plan were implemented."

Click here to read full story

http://www.propublica.org/article/do-cia-cables-show-doctors-monitoring-torture-528

Any doctors who participated in torture should be tried and if convicted, imprisoned
and banned from medical practice. The torturers have disgraced America.

Torture costs American Lives

"Dick Cheney says that torturing detainees has saved American lives. That claim is patently false. Cheney's torture policy was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of A[mericans]..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfYov5o5_2s

A Taste of Torture

A taste of torture

Torture to support lies

Liz Cheney stays silent about torture

More Cheney confessions

Torture blame game continues

Cheney implicates Bush

Cheney puts Bush in the torture picture

Torture Song

Cheney and torture

Comments

Not mentioned is the fact that in the case in question, the suspect's innocent children were also tortured.

Cheney mentions 9/11 as a turning point in his thinking. Among some thoughtful observers Cheney is a primary suspect in 9/11 with his actions on 9/11 and after still begging explanation. Maybe the "change" in thinking was the realization that he could get away with mass murder without protest from the main stream public. Of course his lies about the weapons of mass destruction, yellow cake uranium, etc. led to the deaths of 1.3 million innocent Iraqis, men, women, children, babies, and grandmothers, as well as thousands of American troops.

Hold the Torturers Accountable Or else we'll all be held accountable

http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2009/05/25/hold-the-torturers-accountable/

Hold the Torturers Accountable

Or else we'll all be held accountable

by Rep. Ron Paul, May 26, 2009

While Congress is sidetracked by who said what to whom and when, our nation finds itself at a crossroads on the issue of torture. We are at a point where we must decide if torture is something that is now going to be considered justifiable and reasonable under certain circumstances, or is America better than that?

Read the complete article here

Accountability for torture

From Naomi Wolf at www.guardian.co.uk

"So we should call for retired General James Cullen's solution. A former military prosecutor, he has been at the forefront of calling for accountability – but the right kind. He urges us to indemnify those lower down the chain of command to get their testimonies, so they implicate the ringleaders; and then the only people who should be prosecuted are, as at Nuremberg, those who directed otherwise honorable men and women to commit crimes – the lawyers, and those who are on record as having given the orders: Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush himself. Lay the guilt where it belongs: on Congress; most particularly, and legally, on the leadership that directed this policy; and, emotionally and morally, on our complicit American selves."

Naomi Wolf is the author of Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/28/torture-hyprocrisy