AMERICAN drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people.

The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.

As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants, who have made the area their base.

Kacha Garhi is one of 11 tented camps across Pakistan’s frontier province once used by Afghan refugees and now inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis made homeless in their own land.

—Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones

I don’t know. What one hopes to accomplish by posting about something I’m not quite sure anymore…although by all means post, because once in a while a post changes everything, or more importantly, each one probably touches many people and a net of energy and wisdom is made possible. More accurately, I don’t know what I hope to do with it. I think I just need to get it out or think aloud a lot of times. Because if I’m going to be paying attention, it’s almost overwhelming. And you can’t just be absorbing energy. You have to kick it around, kick it out, give it back in some shape and form. Sometimes, too, I need to write just to say “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

When you did income taxes…honestly. Did you think of these unmanned drone planes? And our astronomical defense budget? And those “militants?” I end up wondering what that means. Those words. What does it take for the AP to call you a “foreign militant” whose life (obviously) is worth, perhaps, a speck of a real person’s life? What merits that precipitous demotion in worth? Does it mean you were killed with a blueprint to a bunker in your hand? That you are connected to people who knew the Saudi network who bombed us eight years ago? Does it mean you are caught with weapons and propaganda? Does it mean you are related by family to conspirators to people hostile to the US? Does it mean you met weekly with community members to stay cohesive and plan how to get through the time? Does it mean you lived in the wrong place? Is there a definition the AP is bound by? Or does the military just write “foreign militants” in their log book and the AP copies it in? Because a whole lot of mess is being dumped on a whole lot of people behind this word. You’d think someone would be policing the definition.

It feels weird to me that I can be so sensitized to a system…it is business as usual when millions of people die or are displaced by the direct and otherwise intended actions of our own “land” or governing body. Our people. Our military. And I can’t, I’m not. That’s why my psyche has emotional hiccups over and over, rejecting it. This chaos, violence, and displacement seems huge. It doesn’t seem at all a part of me. And…I must own a piece of it. I live and benefit from living in the sunny backyard of the empire.

But forget about the dead, our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are displacing massive amounts of people. I know I could google right now and find out how many displaced. I’m sort of afraid to see the number.

For what? What is going on here? Who poses such a threat to us? That we are raining down death all over the place, uprooting entire social networks and generations of families and inflicting such terror across such huge regions? Is that what it’s really all about? Terrifying the entire part of the world that we think stung us…or wants to sting us, or that it could sting us? Ugh. If so, I guess it would make a certain kind of grim sense…if all you are concerned with is a vast, dark, battlefield. But to be part of that mission would feel dreadful in the true sense of the word. A pyrrhic victory, a million pyrrhic victories paid for in full and in absentia.

When I think about all our warring in the “Middle East” in context with the creeping of the security/detention/policing industries into everyday life and mores and the economy here in the US, as well as the violence that has sprung up in the last week or so across the nation as people feel wound too tight or stretched too thin, I think to myself there’s got to be a better way. And I mean that literally. Most of us sense, think, or feel that…which is why we elected the president who felt more like change. But that symbol obviously is not the end of it.

I think about the forces coming to bear and I think that there’s got to be a good number of us willing to be part of that better way. And to know what it is and how that way might manifest. And how we can reinforce it outside of our self as well as within. I may not be able to stop drones from firing on homes in a distant part of the world, but I can think about what actions and ways of thinking in my own life and day is like an empire’s drones firing into fragile homes. And…if that makes sense to you, maybe you can be part of that way in your own way. Let the right wing fanatics and white supremacists give in to terror and violence, twice as many of us need to begin healing our culture. In little ways, in tiny ways, in nearly invisible ways, and in the biggest ways we can manage.

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I often bemoan how the the media’s policy of sanitizing combat images and its failure to report what the true face of war looks like have caused the public to be detached from the carnage wrought by the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

For nearly a decade, both wars have largely been reported by the media and explained to the public by lawmakers in statistical terms; thousands of U.S. soldiers killed in combat, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead, and three-quarters of a million veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress

Perhaps the media is not entirely at fault for failing to provide deeper insight into the psychological impact the wars have had on more than one million U.S. veterans and their families.

Until recently, the press has been prohibited from photographing veterans returning from combat in flag-draped coffins, and funerals for the fallen were likewise off-limits.

But by relying heavily on numbers and press releases as a way of covering both conflicts, the public has been rendered incapable of experiencing or feeling any dramatic element associated with the devastation. It’s a sad truth that the average person is unable to accurately say how many U.S soldiers have been killed and wounded since the wars began (4,257 dead, more than 31,000 wounded, 320,000 diagnosed with brain injuries).

That’s how far removed from reality our society has become in the eight years since the fighting first began. We know the U.S. is currently engaged in two wars; we just have no idea what impact those wars have had on the soldiers and veterans who have bravely served our country.

These are the conclusions I arrived at after reading Marine Capt. Tyler E. Boudreau’s first-person exposé of the time he spent in Iraq and the struggles he and his comrades faced in the aftermath of their deployment.

If Boudreau’s brutally honest, devastatingly accurate, hard-hitting memoir, Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine, were read by the powers that be in Washington, D.C. and by the journalists assigned to cover both military conflicts, there is absolutely no way in hell the plight of our nation’s veterans would take a backseat to the issues currently dominating the evening news coverage or the topics of conversations at dinner tables throughout the country.

Boudreau’s book is so powerful and so superbly written that I found myself reading whole chapters twice just so I could study his writing style and ensure that the graphic imagery he describes is forever seared into my consciousness.

What makes Boudreau’s account such a page-turner is the descriptive nature of his prose. Reading it made me feel like I was embedded with the Marine Corps veteran. There were many instances in which I felt my heart beat faster, my eyes well up with tears, my adrenaline pump through my veins.

Describing an oncoming vehicle that may or may not be a suicide bomber, Boudreau writes:

Pulses jumped and our voices grew sharp and edgy. I leaned out the window and aimed my rifle at the truck. We struggled to see inside it, to spot some kind of clue that might tell us with any certainty whether or not the driver was a suicide bomber. My heart was racing. I was breathing hard as it drew closer and closer. Fire? Don’t fire? It was so difficult to know what to do. Will we live? Will we die? This could be it. And the truck drew closer still. And still we couldn’t seem to come up with a decision. There was no one to ask. There was no manual to reference. There was no time to think it over. There was only now, the moment, and we had to decide. In the end we resolved to hold our fire, and I was glad we did. The truck floated quietly past us without exploding into a million bits of fragmentation in our faces. We stared, agog, at the passengers, a family of four or maybe five crammed into the cab staring back at us, all agog as well.

You know that Boudreau was forced to relive his harrowing experience in Iraq in order to write a book as disturbing and heartwrenching as Packing Inferno.

The “story of Packing Inferno was conceived under fire,” exactly five years ago this month, Boudreau writes in the preface to his book. He eloquently describes how before he was sent to Iraq he had packed dozens of books into his “sea-bag,” one of which was Dante’s Inferno, which he said he didn’t recall taking, but nonetheless gave him a title for his memoir.

I began writing it in Iraq with the war raging around me. When I got home, I found the war was still raging, but it was not outside me anymore, not to touch, or to see, or to hear, or to smell. It was within me. I was no longer packing inferno in my sea-bag, but in my head.

My wife will sometimes catch a shift in my eyes, while we’re talking about groceries, or the kids’ school, or the weather, and she’ll ask me, “What are you thinking about?” She can see I’ve drifted off. But she doesn’t need me to answer, because she knows, and because the answer is always the same.

And therein lies one of the central themes of Boudreau’s 222-page book: the images of the war he has heroically fought have been implanted inside of his mind and are on a permanent loop.

“To say I was duped is not sufficient to lighten the load,” he writes.

The post-traumatic stress of the war in Iraq will forever be a part of Boudreau’s identity and it will be a lifelong battle to keep it in check. For some soldiers, post-traumatic stress is the precursor to suicide, for others it leads to a life of drug abuse, alcoholism, or crime.

Although the word “disorder” usually follows post-traumatic stress, Boudreau objects to the verbiage, calling it an “antiquated” term.

“While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) still uses this term, it is widely rejected by those who work in the field of mental health,” Boudreau wrote in an Author’s Note to his book. “I reject it too… I do not consider the psychological struggle of returning veterans a ‘disorder’ and so I will only refer to this injury as ‘combat stress’ or post-traumatic stress.”

Removing the word “disorder” has helped to eliminate the stigma some veterans say persists when they are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress or the ridicule they endure after seeking help for their deteriorating mental state.

When I spoke with Boudreau recently he told me that part of the stigma has to do with the fact that Marines are supposed to be “tough” and saying that “you feel all broken up because you shot a guy” could make a soldier’s situation worse.

Boudreau said “the smallest action or phrase from a commander can influence Marines and other soldiers not to seek help.”

“I knew the day I left that I would eventually have to return in nine months and manpower is always a struggle,” Boudreau said. “My boss won’t say to deny treatment. But his outlook of me will be negative ” if most of the unit has been discharged due to post-traumatic stress.

Boudreau expanded upon this notion in a recent op-ed published in the Boston Globe.

The pressure to prepare ourselves quickly was intense. When the first Marine came to my office and asked to see the psychiatrist about some troubling issues from our time in Iraq, I was sympathetic. I said, “No problem.” When another half dozen or so Marines approached me with the same request, I was only somewhat concerned.

But when all of them and several more returned from their appointments with recommendations for discharge, I’ll admit I was alarmed. Suddenly I was not as concerned about their mental health as I was about my company’s troop strength.

As all those Marines in my company began filtering out, some from essential positions, I started to worry about the welfare of those remaining. I worried, quite naturally, that if the exodus continued, we might not have enough to accomplish our mission or to survive on the battlefield. My sympathies for those individuals claiming post-traumatic stress began to wane. A commander cannot serve in earnest both the mission and the psychologically wounded.

This underscores a larger issue, one that the U.S. government was totally unprepared to deal with as it planned for the Iraq war.

Prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, documents released by the Department of Veterans Affairs said it expected a maximum of 8,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.

However, according to a study released last year by the RAND Corporation, there are more than 320,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffering from major depression, PTSD and/or traumatic brain injury. The report found that the VA has been and continues to be ill-equipped to deal with these cases when soldiers return from combat, especially after multiple tours.

An Army task force last year also found major flaws in the way the VA treated and cared for veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries.

Boudreau said the treatment of post-traumatic stress is antithetical to the mantra of “Mission Accomplished.”

“The mission will always supersede treatment,” Boudreau said. “And because of that the treatment will always be dubious.”

And all the talk from bureaucrats about putting an end to multiple deployments, which has been blamed on the skyrocketing cases of post-traumatic stress and suicides, is inconceivable,” Boudreau said.

“I’ve heard the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say ‘we have to change this ethic,’” Boudreau said. “But it’s not going to happen. Why? Because the military cannot afford a 20 percent reduction in its force.”

Since writing Packing Inferno, Boudreau has become an outspoken advocate for veterans.

Over the past four months, he has penned op-eds on veterans issues that have been published in the New York Times, Boston Globe and The Progressive.

In a New York Times op-ed, Boudreau argued that the decision not to award Purple Hearts to veterans is wrong and feeds into the cultural stigma the military has for veterans who bear the psychological wounds of war.

“Why, for instance, if a veteran has been given a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress and awarded benefits, should he not also be awarded a Purple Heart?

“Perhaps a new decoration, a new medal, could be established specifically for those suffering from post-traumatic stress. It would be awarded to those whose minds and souls have been sundered by war.

“I suggest we call this medal the Black Heart. Certainly the hearts of these soldiers are black, with the terrible things they saw and did on the battlefield. Certainly the country should see these Black Hearts pinned on their chests.”

In addition to his work on behalf of veterans, Boudreau has taken on the Iraqi refugee crisis and recently traveled to Jordan to call attention to the matter. Last year, he and his colleagues formed the nonprofit organization Iraq Veterans’ Refugee Aid Association (IVRAA) in response to inadequate measures by the U.S. government to effectively deal with the crisis, he said.

This summer, Boudreau is undertaking a cross-country bicycle tour with other veterans to search for “what’s on ‘the other side’ of the battlefield.

“It is very much about veterans who have found themselves hurled suddenly to the other side of a catastrophic injury, or Post-Traumatic Stress [sic], or an inexplicably dysfunctional life in the aftermath of war. But it is also about the nature of warfare itself. There is a great mythology associated with battle. We seek ‘the other side’ of that mythology. We seek the other side of ourselves. We travel to ‘the other side’ of the country to find it,” Boudreau explains on his website.

Three years ago, Boudreau, who spent much of his entire adult life in the military, resigned his Marine Corps commission.

“In 2005, after 12 years of active service in the Marine Corps and with growing reservations about the war, I relinquished command of my rifle company and resigned my commission,” Boudreau writes in Packing Inferno. “It struck me that, in our headlong pursuit to deliver freedom and democracy and to expel an oppressive regime and combat terrorism, we had inadvertently lost sight of the very people we’d been deployed to help.”

Packing Inferno is one of the most important historical documents to come out of the Iraq war if for no other reason than it shows what the true face of the Iraq war looks like. It’s a remarkable achievement in war reportage and it deserves to be shelved next to the Great War Books and should be required reading for every lawmaker and students of American history.

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney may continue to say, as he did on Sunday, that the interrogation of “war on terror” suspects was “done legally; it was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles.” But those assurances ring hollow.

The true story is coming into ever-sharper focus: high-ranking U.S. officials turning to what Cheney called “the dark side” after the 9/11 attacks and ordering the CIA to create a network of secret prisons. Determined to extract information from suspected terrorists, the White House then collaborated with Justice Department lawyers to find ways around anti-torture laws and American traditions.

Though the outlines of this story have been sketched out over several years, many chilling details are now getting filled in, including an article by author Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books about an ICRC report concluding that the abuse of 14 “high-value” detainees “constituted torture.”

“In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” according to the ICRC report cited by Danner. Since the ICRC’s responsibilities involve ensuring compliance with the Geneva Conventions and supervising the treatment of prisoners of war, the organization’s findings carry legal weight.

The ICRC report also found that there was a consistency in many details from the detainees who were interviewed separately and that the first “high-value” detainee to be captured, Abu Zubaydah, appeared to have been used as something of a test case by his interrogators. According to various accounts, he was transferred to a secret prison in Thailand and possibly elsewhere to be brutally questioned.

According to Zubaydah’s account to the ICRC:

Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow. Measuring perhaps in area [3 1/2 by 2 1/2 feet by 6 1/2 feet high]. The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 1/2 feet] in height. I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck, they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room. I was also repeatedly slapped in the face….

I was then put into the tall black box for what I think was about one and a half to two hours. The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside…. They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe.

When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.

Zubaydah told the ICRC that CIA interrogators told him he was the first prisoner to be tortured in this way, “so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people.”

Zubaydah also told the ICRC representatives that he was subjected to the drowning sensation of waterboarding, a practice that has been considered torture since the Inquisition. Zubaydah and other detainees added that they were kept naked, placed in frigid rooms and forced to spend long hours in painful “stress” positions.

Danner said the chapter headings of the ICRC report listed some of the torture techniques reported by the detainees to ICRC personnel: “suffocation by water,” “prolonged stress standing,” “beatings by use of a collar,” “confinement in a box.”

Some of these techniques, such as the use of waterboarding on three detainees, have been acknowledged by senior Bush administration officials, including Cheney who has said he approved of specific harsh tactics applied during the interrogations.

Legal Debate

The abuse of Zubaydah paralleled an internal debate at senior levels of the Bush administration over how to provide legal justification for the brutal interrogations. Zubaydah was captured in a raid on a safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, on March 28, 2002, that left him badly wounded from three gunshots.

In July 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his legal counsel, William Haynes, solicited input from military psychologists about developing harsh methods that interrogators could use against detainees, according to a report released last year by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Mr. Haynes was not the only senior official considering new interrogation techniques for use against detainees,” the report said. “Members of the President’s Cabinet and other senior officials attended meetings in the White House where specific interrogation techniques were discussed.”

President George W. Bush became obsessed with Zubaydah and the information he might have about terrorist plots against the United States, according to Ron Suskind’s book, The One Percent Doctrine.

“Bush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind wrote, adding that Bush questioned one CIA briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?”

Meanwhile, senior Bush aides were meeting with deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo and other Justice Department lawyers from the powerful Office of Legal Counsel to discuss how anti-torture and other laws applied to interrogation of prisoners in the “war on terror.”

Yoo developed novel theories that defined torture narrowly, permitting acts short of pain associated with “death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions.” In devising this standard, Yoo relied on an obscure 2000 health benefits statute.

A report prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility determined that Yoo blurred the lines between an attorney charged with providing independent legal advice to the White House and a policy advocate who was working to advance the administration’s goals, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the contents of the report are still classified.

As evidence of Bush’s torture policies began to build — especially after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004 — Bush and Cheney built a line of defense, insisting that they had not committed war crimes because they were operating under legal guidance from the Justice Department.

However, that argument could collapse if it were determined that the lawyers were colluding with administration officials in setting policy, rather than providing professional legal advice. Already, extensive evidence exists, including Yoo’s own writings, showing that he participated in high-level administration meetings to discuss and set policy.

Other evidence on the public record suggests that the Bush administration’s intent to use brutal interrogations pre-dated the legal discussions with Yoo.

Cheney helped set the administration on a lawless course only days after the 9/11 attacks. On Sept. 16, 2001, he told NBC’s Tim Russert that “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world.

“A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”

The next day, Sept. 17. 2001, President Bush signed a “memorandum of understanding” that authorized the CIA to establish a “hidden global internment network” for the secret detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists, Danner reported in his article.

On Monday, CIA Director Leon Panetta enlisted the help of former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire to assist him with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe of the agency’s Bush-era interrogation and detention practices, Panetta’s office said

Rudman will work as Panetta’s “special adviser” assisting the CIA in dealing with inquiries from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, announced earlier this month that her committee will conduct a year-long secret investigation into the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” and detention practices and whether the methods resulted in actionable intelligence.

Panetta said he does not support any inquiry that would lead to the prosecution of CIA personnel who carried out the interrogations, such as those used against Zubaydah.

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A document compiled by the Missouri Information Analysis Center for Missouri law enforcement agencies had some sketchy information about warning signs for domestic terrorists.

The Feb. 20 report called “The Modern Militia Movement” mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature.

The document was leaked by Infowars.com which is generally a conspiracy website and easy to discount.

It might be easy to discount if a spokesman for the Missouri law enforcement, Lt. John Hotz, hadn’t come forward to defend the document and downplay its importance.

“All this is an educational thing,” Hotz said of the report. “Troopers have been shot by members of groups, so it’s our job to let law enforcement officers know what the trends are in the modern militia movement.”…

…But Hotz said using factors in the report to determine whether someone could be a terrorist is not profiling. He said people who display signs or bumper stickers from third-party groups are not in danger of harassment from police.

“It’s giving the makeup of militia members and their political beliefs,” Hotz said of the report. “It’s not saying that everybody who supports these candidates is involved in a militia. It’s not even saying that all militias are bad.”

So a document released to law enforcement specifically states that support of third parties is a red flag for potential domestic terrorism and to look out for said red flags…but acting on that information wouldn’t be profiling. No. Not at all.

So who exactly is this organization that compiled the document?

Lt. John Hotz of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said the report comes from publicly available, trend data on militias. It was compiled by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, a “fusion center” in Jefferson City that combines resources from the federal Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. The center, which opened in 2005, was set up to collect local intelligence to better combat terrorism and other criminal activity, he said.

A “fusion center”. In February the ACLU released information about a Texas “fusion center” that they claimed was an example of inappropriate police intelligence operations targeting political, religious and social activists for investigation.

The North Central Texas Fusion System bulletin states that it is “imperative for law enforcement officers to report” the activities of lobbying groups, Muslim civil rights organizations and anti-war protest groups in their areas.

“This memo is not a plea for legitimate intelligence, and seems to endorse discrimination against Muslims,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The idea that the tolerance advocated by the groups being targeted would be treated as a menace to American security demonstrates a disregard for civil liberties and a disdain for democracy itself. The kind of indiscriminate and unlawful investigations this bulletin calls for always results in a chilling effect on free speech and association.”

So don’t support third parties in Missouri, and if you are Muslim and/or anti-war…stay the hell out of Texas.

Actually, you might not be safe in other states. The ACLU release notes that there are currently 70 fusion centers across the United States. That gives a comforting thought don’t you think?

I’m not a Libertarian. Not by a long shot. Nor am I in any way right-wing. But this is America. People should be allowed to believe whatever political philosophy they want to believe…without government harassment.

To be honest, these “fusion centers” would probably have a field day with most of the blogs on the internet, and many posts from this one. I’ve made it clear that I am anti-war…should I be profiled for that?

Would you think it fair to be pulled over because of something you wrote on a blog? For a bumper sticker? Because you wore a political T-Shirt that was critical of the government?

America shouldn’t be policing people’s political views. That’s not freedom. That’s not right at all.

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Abu Zubaydah, allegedly the first detainee held at the black sites, states the following:

Cold water from a bottle that had been kept in a fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe…. The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about one hour. Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the water-boarding as I struggled in the panic of not being able to breath. Female interrogators were also present…and a doctor was always present, standing out of sight behind the head of [the] bed, but I saw him when he came to fix a clip to my finger which was connected to a machine. I think it was to measure my pulse and oxygen content in my blood. So they could take me to [the] breaking point.

Health professional supervision of torture is one of the gravest affronts to medical ethics and is illegal under both domestic and international anti-torture law. Danner’s disclosure of the ICRC report on detainee treatment in CIA custody is shocking but not suprising. For years evidence has been mounting through news articles, government investigations, and even the statements of Bush Administration officials that health professionals were centrally complicit in the breaking of bodies and minds at the black sites, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Now, as pressure mounts on Capitol Hill for a commission of inquiry into detainee abuses, the work of PHR’s Campaign Against Torture is more relevant and critical than ever. PHR is leading the charge to ensure that violations of medical ethics, such as those documented by Danner, are fully investigated and perpetrators are held to account.

Scott Allen, MD, is Medical Advisor for Physicians for Human Rights

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The use of health professionals to advise on conditions of confinement designed to enhance the interrogation process is unethical.  The report by Admiral Walsh highlights the fact that BSCs do not provide clinical health care. But this distinction is beside the point, since it is unethical for health professionals to have any direct participation in interrogation.

In addition, the DoD’s inhumane policy and practice of force-feeding detainees engaged in hunger strikes remain in place. This policy requires medical professionals to abandon the ethical guidelines promulgated by the World Medical Association and adopted by the American Medical Association, which prohibit force-feeding a competent and informed patient. This policy, which continues to harm the physical and mental health of detainees and compromise medical ethics, highlights the need for a comprehensive investigation into the role of medical professionals in detainee abuse and the DoD’s exploitation of medical professionals in such abuse. The report joins a series of DoD internal reviews that self-servingly justify existing policy and lack the independence and perspective necessary to restore the integrity of military medical ethics.

Physicians for Human Rights continues to support an independent, nonpartisan commission to undertake such an investigation and continues to encourage the DoD to bring its policies in line with established principles of medical ethics.

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“Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech a few hours before the documents were released. “Not only is that school of thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good.”

The newly released documents illustrate just how far off the reservation the Bush team went to violate Constitutional rights in the name of fighting terror.

The legal memos written by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after page of documents, was that the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights.

Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combatting terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 23, 2001, memo.

“First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: “The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

Yep. Those same Republicans that preach the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution, willfully violated it.

Just earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh proclaimed:

We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Of course, Limbaugh apparently doesn’t know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution…but whatever, right?

He further stated:

Well, the Constitution doesn’t need to be redefined.

Oops. Bush did exactly that, Mr. Limbaugh. Are you going to chastise him? Is Bush Un-American? Is he a criminal?

Just wondering.

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