Bioethicist Steven Miles -- author of Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror  -- sends us this extremely moving talk he gave to St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church. Miles deals here with the moral challenges posed by torture and the ways in which torture affects all of us by destroying community.

Recent revelations raise questions about the role of health providers at US detention facilities. Thus, the Washington Post reported that detainees are being involuntarily drugged. Almerindo Ojeda provides additional evidence that health providers at Guantánamo aided interrogators to the detriment of detainees.

More after the break.

The Sunday New York Times brings new revelations of the Bush administration's ever-evolving legal rationale for torture. Like the hydra, lopping off one legal argument only leads to another. The only thing that remains constant is that the administration can do whatever it wants to those in CIA custody.

Today's revelation is of a set of letters between Senator Wyden and the Department of "Justice" on the legal basis for the CIA's "enhanced interrogation," aka torture, program. The letters seek to clarify the reasoning and impact of President Bush's executive order last summer that reauthorized CIA torture.

As we contemplate the fifth anniversary of the unleashing of this horror which has cost so many their lives, let us also remember the considerable psychic toll of this act of aggression and destruction. Millions of Iraqis suffer the agonies of loss of loved ones. Uncounted numbers suffer the loss of their homes and communities which, more even than lodging, provide anchors of stability in life. And virtually all Iraqis have lost that sense of progress and hope that makes life’s pains and agonies bearable. Long after the brutal contests for power between rival factions have been resolved through dialog or wound down through exhaustion, Iraqis will be struggling to put together their lives, to create a world in which daily life is not unimaginable, and in which hope for the future exists.

The Swedish Journal of Psychology has covered the role of psychologists, and the American Psychological Association  in Bush administration interrogations. It includes an overview article by the Journal's editor, Eva Brita Järnefors and answered to question posed by her to APA and myself. The APA questions were answered by Rhea Farberman. I also answered a set of questions. With permission, I posted all three articles in English here. My original response was too long and was cut by the editor. I thus posted my original response after my published response. The original of all three articles is available as a pdf here.

On Monday I wrote about the unprecedented attempt by Bank Julius Baer to censor the Wikileak.org web site by  having a San Francisco judge issue a restraining order telling the web site's domain name registrar to stop Wikileak.org from pointing to its actual IP address, 88.80.13.160. This was the first known instance of a court shutting down an entire web site. One Kafkaesque feature of this omnibus order is that the court order and other materials were ordered to be emailed to Wikileaks. But with the domain name Wikileaks.org abolished, no mail sent to them could get to anyone. I'll update some of the developments since then.

One of the most important web sites in recent months has been Wikileaks.org.  Wikileaks has upset the Chinese government enough that they are attempting to censor it, as is the Thai military junta. Wikileaks is now under attack from a censorship effort by a California court.

Wikileaks has obtained the long kept secret Rules of Engagement  (ROE) for U.S. troops in Iraq. This document sets out the rules guiding authorized U.S. troop actions in that occupation. While the Wikileaks document dates  from 2005, as these ROEs generally change slowly the rules for today are likely similar, though we can't be sure, of course, to what extent more recent ROE's differ.

A major battle is shaping up in California where a coalition is working to remove health providers from participating in military and CIA interrogations. I have written recently about efforts in the California legislature to get health professionals, psychologists included, out of interrogation of enemy combatants. Senator Ridley-Thomas has introduced a resolution, SJR 19, that would request the military and CIA to remove all California licenses health providers from involvement in interrogations.  [For arguments in favor of the Resolution, see the Physicians for Human Rights letterto the Senate committee.]

Last night we had news that the CIA, in 2005, destroyed videotapes of the "interrogation", aka, torture, of two  al Qaeda detainees.  One of these detainees  has been identified as  Abu Zubaydah. Of special relevance is that, according to Katherine Eban in Vanity Fair last summer, Zubaydah was tortured by psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

I was recently interviewed on the Pinky Show about the contributions of psychoanalysis to understanding our American culture and empire in the age of the War on Terror.

Here is the YouTube version:

Those preferring can read the transcript after the fold [reproduced with permission of the Pinky Show]:

Recently a major 2003  Guantanamo Standard Operating Procedures [SOP] manual was posted on the wikileaksweb site. Ignored by most major sources for a week, Reuters, has picked up on the leak Thursday and the New York Times on Friday.

Today I sent the following letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on behalf of a broad coalition of psychologists and other mental health professionals -- including Coalition for an Ethical Psychology; Psychologists for Social Responsibility; The Center for Victims of Torture, Minneapolis, MN; Psychologists for an Ethical APA; Withhold APA Dues; Monterey Bay (CA) Psychological Association  -- concerned about the roles of psychologists in the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program and other abusive interrogations. The SSCI is in the process of conducting classified hearings on these issues.

A new survey by the British polling agency ORB reports over one million Iraqis have been killed by violence since the 2003 invasion. This number is even higher than that derived from the so-called "Lancet study" of Gilbert Burnham et al that last summer found about 650,00 total excess deaths from violence and deteriorating health conditions. The Lancet study has been subjected to relentless attack by the American and British governments, by Iraq Body Count, by those alleging that its methodology had a "main street bias,"and by others. During the controversy, independdent erplication of the Lancet findings were sorely missing. While it's early to be sure, as details are not yet available, this new survey provides the potential replication, supporting the claim that violent deaths in Iraq are in the many hundreds of thousands.

Here is the press release:

Wednesday night  the following Open Letter to Sharon Brehm, President of the American Psychological Association was sent by over 40 psychologists.  [It is also available in pdf format at the above link. See also the related briefing paper: Q&A:  How the Pentagon?s Inspector General Report Contradicts What the APA Has Said About the Involvement of Psychologists in Abusive Interrogations.]

Read the Letter beneath the fold.

The Defense Department (DoD) has just declassified a report from their Inspector General (OIG) looking at the various investigations that the Department has conducted into repeated claims of detainee abuse – a.k.a. "torture" and "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" – banned by international and United States law.  The report documents that the various DoD "investigations were, individually and in total, inadequate:

Allegations of detainee abuse were not consistently reported, investigated, or managed in an effective, systematic, and timely manner. Multiple reporting channels were available for reporting allegations and, once reported, command discretion could be used in determining the action to be taken on the reported allegation. We did not identify any specific allegations that were not reported or reported and not investigated. Nevertheless, no single entity within any level of command was aware of the scope and breadth of detainee abuse.

One of the people I most admire is Jo Wilding. Realizing the Iraq Iraq invasion was drawing near, she went to Iraq to  relay the voices of ordinary people swept up in the delusions of world leaders, only to be expelledduring the war by the Iraqi government. After the war she decided to do something concrete to help Iraqis: she created and brought a circus to entertain poor Iraqi children trying, somehow, to survive the difficult times.

At one point, when I still had a fantasy of helping Iraqis deal with their mental health needs, I was put in touch with Jo. She offered to conduct some surveys on the mental health needs there. But, alas, events interfered.

[More after the fold.]

In an attempt to get the American Psychological Association to come to terms with the moral crisis posed by psychologist participation in coercive interrogations at Guantanamo, Bagram, the CIA black sites, and elsewhere, psychologist Neil Altman last summer proposed a Resolution for a Moratorium on Psychologist Participation in Interrogations at US Detention Centers Holding Foreign Detainees, so-called "Enemy Combatants"  [pdf; see also the draft justification statement; and other related materials.]

Here is the Summary and Overview of the resolution:

This summary and overview emphasizes aspects central to the proposed moratorium resolution. The points below will also address certain misconceptions that have arisen concerning the resolution.