U.S. military medical staff slammed in British journal By OLIVER MOORE Globe and Mail Update UPDATED AT 7:01 PM EDT Thursday, Aug 19, 2004 Some U.S. military doctors in Iraq and Afghanistan betrayed their duty to patients by participating in and covering up the abuse of prisoners, a report in the British journal Lancet argues. Written by Dr. Steven Miles, a bioethicist at a U.S. university, the article calls for an urgent investigation to assess the extent to which U.S. military doctors, nurses and medics abandoned the “moral obligations” of their profession. Published Thursday, the same day reports emerged that an U.S. army inquiry will lay blame on commanders at Abu Ghraib for creating conditions that allowed abuses to occur at the jail, the article says the testimony which has emerged paints a picture of medical professionals allowing, assisting and participating in the abuse of prisoners. They are accused of falsifying death certificates, tampering with bodies and, in at least one case, reviving someone beaten unconscious and then leaving him again to the mercy of his interrogators. In at least two cases, Dr. Miles notes, military officials released innocuous information explaining away prisoner deaths, only to later admit that they had died because of mistreatment. At no point does it seem that the medical people working for the U.S. military blew the whistle, he writes critically. There is no official record of them contradicting faulty death reports issued by the military or informing on their colleagues. A U.S. military spokesman offered the defence that the incidents described by Dr. Miles became public only because the Pentagon's own investigations. “Many of these cases remain under investigation and charges will be brought against any individual where there is evidence of abuse,” Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson said. The Pentagon launched a quiet investigation earlier this year after a soldier in Iraq revealed the existence of a computer disk of violent images. Some of the photos were circulated around the world, provoking anger and disgust and complicating U.S. efforts to pacify Iraq. But although the conduct of soldiers has since been scrutinized at length, the role of medics has been largely overlooked. Dr. Miles said that military medicine reform needs to be enshrined in international law and has to include more clout for military medical staff in the defence of human rights. “The detaining power's health personnel are the first and often the last line of defence against human rights abuses. Their failure to assume that role emphasizes to the prisoner how utterly beyond humane appeal they are,” he said. In his harsh submission to Lancet, Dr. Miles criticizes the inaction of medical staff who did not report abuses but also charges that, in a far worse transgression, “the [military] medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations.” Dr. Miles acknowledges that military medical staff can feel pulled between loyalty to country and adherence to their professional codes, but has little sympathy. He argues that The Geneva Conventions address this ethical dilemma, stipulating that medical personnel cannot be compelled to carry out any work other than that concerned with their medical duties. “The role of military medicine in these abuses merits special attention because of the moral obligations of medical professionals with regard to torture and because of horror at health professionals who are silently or actively complicit with torture,” he writes. In an editorial accompanying Dr. Miles' article, the journal argues that military medical professionals must not allow misguided loyalties to trick them into abandoning their duty to patients. “Guidelines and codes of practice state that doctors, even in military forces, must first and foremost be concerned about their patients and bound by principles of medical ethics.” With a report from Associated Press http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040819.wdocs0819_2/BNStory/International/
I still find it amazing that they could do something so obviously stupid. Even if they could get an advantage intelligence wise from these tactics, the potential backlash of bad will massively outwieghs the possible benefit. Just really poor decision making.
i would think after all the allegations that were thrown to the U.S. millitary after the prisoner abuse fiasco at the prison, they would finally clean up their acts...seems like they dont wanna hold hostages over there, they wanna beat them and eventually make them take nude pictures so it can make the people working over there laugh. i think our soldiers should of learned their leason the first time and not even let this kinda crap happen again. Its just going to stir more outrage and again make the u.s. troops stay in iraq for longer than needed.
Oh it apparently goes MUCH deeper than that triqster. This is about to explode. From the Christian Science Monitor. Abu Ghraib report: 'Failure of leadership' at highest levels Plus, new questions are being raised about what role military doctors played in Iraqi prison. by Tom Regan | csmonitor.com The Washington Post reports that the US military's investigation into the abuse by US military personnel of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, headed by Maj. Gen. George Fay, will report that the incidents at Abu Ghraib weren't just the actions of a band of "rogue military police soldiers," but resulted from leadership failures that rise to the "highest levels" of the US military in Iraq. While the report will recommend new charges against 20 low-ranking soldiers, the Post reports, it will not, however, recommend any criminal charges against Army officers. Officials said the probe criticizes commanders for essentially failing to pick up the strong signs of abuse as they rose through the chain of command and for all but ignoring reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross detailing the abuse. The top command "shares responsibility for not ensuring proper leadership, proper discipline and proper resources," one defense official said. "Command should have paid more attention to the issue. Signals, symptoms of abuse weren't fully vetted to the top." Abu Ghraib's former commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, is questioning the exonerating nature of the report. The Toronto Star reports that Brig. Gen. Karpinski is concerned that the report won't "adequately examine decisions made by officers above her rank in assessing what led to the abuses." The Post also reports on the attempts by former reservist Ken Davis, a soldier who witnessed the abuse at Abu Ghraib and has now returned to the US, to convince investigators that it was "military intelligence and other intelligence operatives, not the seven soldiers charged, directing the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison." "It seems they want to sacrifice seven soldiers for the sins of everyone," he said. "Whoever led them down that path is a culprit as well." An editorial in the Journal-News of Westchester Co., New York calls on US authorities to give a more-complete explanation of how these abuses could have happened, and how senior military leaders could have "had their heads in the sand" for so long. The report by Maj. Gen. George Fay blames at least two dozen military intelligence personnel, civilian intelligence officers and Central Intelligence Agency staffers for wrongful conduct. Once again, it targets no top officials, certainly no military officers above the rank of colonel. Top commanders are merely faulted for lack of oversight — as if their only mistake was to let the Abu Ghraib jailers go off on some unsupervised frolic. This conclusion would be supportable if the International Red Cross had not complained of abuses at Abu Ghraib commencing in May 2003. No one cared. No corrective action was taken then or until January 2004, when a whistle-blower gave superiors pictures of the abuse. Those images continue to speak volumes. Reuters, meanwhile, reports that an article (subscription required) published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, alleges that US military doctors played a role in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The report, written by University of Minnesota bioethicist Steven Miles, cites evidence that some doctors "falsified death certificates to cover up killings and hid evidence of beatings." "The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations," the University of Minnesota professor said. One detainee, who collapsed after a beating, was revived by medics so that the abuse could continue, Miles said. "Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib," he wrote in his study based on evidence from US congressional hearings, sworn statements of detainees and soldiers, medical journal accounts and aid agency information. The Voice of America reports that the Department of Defense has called Dr. Miles statements "inaccurate." In a written statement, it says that although its own investigation has not been completed, it has no evidence that American military medical staff collaborated with abusive behavior by army interrogators or guards, failed to render medical aid to injured detainees, or falsified death certificates. But an editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer points out that military medical personnel were "at best negligent in not reporting American abuse of prisoners at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison and, at worst, they participated in covering up the abuse." Finally, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reports that Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about what incidents like the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib are doing to the image of the US abroad. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said the US is less respected in the world than it has been in the past, and that more than two-thirds of those who feel this way believe it is a "major problem" for the US. On the other hand, the Pew Center poll also shows that many Americans also believe the US is stronger militarily now than in the past. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0820/dailyUpdate.html?s=ent2
"It seems they want to sacrifice seven soldiers for the sins of everyone," he said. "Whoever led them down that path is a culprit as well." We know the buck will stop at those seven. I have the moral clarity to realise that the failure to continue up the chain of command is morally bankrupt. One would hope that God might whisper as much into GWB's ear.
FIRE RUMSFELD!!!!!! Abu Ghraib Report Faults Top Officials By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's most senior civilian and military officials share a portion of blame for creating conditions that led to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq, according to a new report. The report, by a commission appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was briefing Rumsfeld on its findings and recommendations Tuesday in advance of a Pentagon news conference to release the details. The commission was headed by James Schlesinger, a former secretary of defense. A person familiar with the report said it implicitly faulted Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by finding that those responsible for the military prison system in Iraq were operating under confusing policies on allowable interrogation techniques. The person discussed some aspects of the report on condition of anonymity. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20040824/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_prisoner_abuse
It figures they'd try to dig up the prison talk again to get talk away from the swift boat crap that's been in the news so much lately.
Uh Faos maybe you missed this sentence I know. why do the facts have an agenda against the administration?
THat's right. The Pentagon wanted to get away from the swifties talk. It's not like the prison abuse is an actual serious issue that is important and currently facing our nation.
I loved Rumsfeld, by far the most entertaining in the admin to listen to but imo, Abu Ghraib is a direct result of the treatment of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and his classifiying them as enemy combatants.. maybe that was Bush, I don't recall... c'mon History class isn't so you know what year Germany invaded Poland, it's so you can learn the lessons of the past didn't we learn anything from the Nazi's and the Japanese Once you dehumanise your enemy, or anyone for that matter, human tragedies always follow
