US military doctors have been accused of turning a blind eye to abuse at Guantanamo Bay prison camp, in a letter published in a British medical journal.
The letter in The Lancet focused on accusations of force-feeding of hunger strikers at the prison camp in Cuba.
It also drew parallels between the doctors at Guantanamo and South African doctors involved in the treatment of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.
Initially it was suggested that Mr Biko died of a hunger strike but an inquest later heard he died of head injuries sustained during a police interrogation. It was found that the two doctors responsible for treating Mr Biko had provided inadequate care and falsified medical records.
The letter in The Lancet noted that no US medical worker had been charged with any serious offence but that there were “numerous instances documented including fraudulent record keeping on detainees who have died as a result of failed interrogations”.
“Failed interrogations”? As primo a piece of crap semantics as “extreme rendition”.
The letter alleges that the failure of the US regulatory authorities to investigate such instances is damaging the reputation of US military medicine. “The attitude of the US medical establishment appears to be one of ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil'”, it said.
About 340 detainees are being held in Guantanamo on suspicion of links to terrorism. Many have been there several years, but most have not been charged.
Failure to charge a suspect in any sort of case means only one thing. A prosecutor who knows damned well he can’t prove his case.
Curious: did Lancet also draw any parallels between Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in the concentration camps – for whatever that might also bring to this sincere analysis?
But the story is erroneous anyway, for “as Michael Moore undeniably shows in SiCKO, Guantanamo detainees are given top notch health care while poor Americans are denied treatment and dumped on skid row.”
So I guess the poor Americans have nothing to complain about after all.
RBG
Gee, dude – you left out the American Indians and dolphins. Neocon nutjobs still use PC copouts more than anyone else. Along with the inevitable non sequitur.
The article is about phonying documentation of torture. But, then, you’ve always found everything about Gitmo acceptable behavior.
I heard the Bush Administration is carrying through with the next few logical steps before they close down the concentration camp:
Harvesting kidneys and other useful body parts – for profit, of course. To be overseen by the Bush twins as part of their preparation for service to humanity.
Publishing a compendium of “confessions” acquired – through one of Rupert Murdoch’s companies, of course. To be serialised on Fox reality TV.
Feel free to add your own RNC logic.
You want to know what ticks me off? This **letter** which is nothing more than a propaganda piece by the left is treated as some sort of dinfinative evidence of wrong doing. Bullshit!!!!!
If the prisinors were allowed to continue their hunger stike and died…..do you suppose there would be a letter signed by all of these so-called eminient people praising those same Doctors for NOT force feeding them????
There isn’t a damn country in the world that will allow a prsinor to continue a hunger stike until their death(oh wait, I’m wrong, seems the high and mighty British have, can you say IRA prisinors?). They always, at a point when Doctors tell them it needs done, will go to force feeding to save the prisinors life. The term force feeding is a bit of a misnomer here as well…..***force*** feeding is nothing more than what any Nursing home does for patients who need extra nourishment to survive but can’t eat properly. This article makes it sounds like these Doctors are the American equivilent of the French pate de fois groi farmers…..forcing huge amounts of food down the prisioners(geese) throats, when nothing could be further from the truth, they got medically monitored tube feedings of Ensure and Boost(high caloric, high protien drinks) and vitamin supplement drinks……. nothing more.
This crap that Americans can’t do anything right, or everything we do is wrong or for some ulterior motive gets really old after awhile. There isn’t a damn country on this Earth with clean hands or counsious, and sure as hell none so perfect that they can correct our every move.
Do we always do the right thing, hell no…….but we, as a nation still have done more than any other nation in existience today to keep the world free of things like the Nazi’s. Maybe the goverments motives aren’t always the best, but most people in this country would give their shirts off their backs to help anyone in the world who asked for it, we prove it every day in a million different ways.
We can be arrogant(even when we are wrong), stubborn, bigoted, vengeful, and even cruel……but we are also the exact oppisites of all of those things and on a far more regular basis than than the bad stuff.
My spelling is really bad today….sorry….bad day at red rock i’m afraid.
#4, joshua,
You took your first paragraph and showed how much you are in denial. Then, your second paragraph is all about apologizing for sounding like the jerk you sounded like.
This is not about other countries. This is about what OUR government has done in our name. Whether you can appreciate this or not remains to be seen. Whether or not you care if a law has been broken remains to be seen. Most people do care though.
#6…Fusion…and what law was broken? If you get arrested for any offense and you decide to go on a hunger strike, at some point the authorities will bring in a Doctor to monitor you being tube fed. The only difference here is these people are enemy combatants or were arrested in an area of military conflict(with weapons in their hands or other means of killing).
I would rather these men were tube fed than they died. I would rather they weren’t there in the first place, but they are. The only denial here is you Fusion and those like you who think these people or most of them are just *misunderstood* and were arrested for hanging out at a 7-11 somewhere.
Joshua,
The only difference here is these people are enemy combatants or were arrested in an area of military conflict(with weapons in their hands or other means of killing).
There is no such thing as a “enemy combatant”. It is a term invented by the Bush administration to justify holding these men without charge or oversight. Many are troops fighting for the losing side. Others were just innocents who were pegged as insurgents by those looking to collect the bounty. Their rightful classification should be Prisoner of War.
Under the laws of the US, torture is illegal. The Supreme Court has confirmed that American laws apply to Guantanamo. The FBI has confirmed that torture was used on prisoners held at Guantanamo. Any and all who knowingly and willfully participate in torture is guilty of a criminal offense.
We are not talking about whether some other fucking country is doing it. We are talking about the United States of America, in the name of you and me, doing it. Whether other countries “are doing it” is irrelevant.
OH, shit !!! I forgot. You have a Law Degree. Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick !!! So your legal opinion is that because other countries like Saudi Arabia torture, that now makes it legal for Americans to torture prisoners.
Joshua, your comment just qualified you for the moran of the month award.
Didn’t take long to “Goodwin” this thread.
Oh #4 “Waaaa Mommy, why can’t I jump off the bridge? All my friends are.”
#9…Fusion…..Those meds making you hallucinate again Fusion? I don’t think I condoned or said torture was ok by anyone, anywhere.
Want to cite the Supreme Court ruling that said that US law applies to these people in Guantanamo? While I would agree that there might be innocents caught up in all this, the odds favor it, I really don’t consider those who fight for terrorist groups as **soldiers* and when captured *prisioner’s of war*. In the past, they would have been executed on the spot, as was done during WWII by the Germans, Russians, British, and Americans, since *partisans* were consideredextra-military by all sides.
This article is about so-called **force feeding** the prisioner’s at Gitmo, and I’m saying that what was done was not torture, but accepted procedure in any hospital or other facility where a patient or in the case of hunger strikers, prisioners need to be fed in order for them not to die. As I said before….ask any Doctor or Nurse about how tube feeding is done, how long it takes, and if patients sometimes(often actually) need to be restrained.
Meantime, get your glasses corrected or lower your dosages. 🙂
#11, joshua,
There you go again. Only now you advocate murdering the enemy after they’ve surrendered.
Wanna see the Supreme’s decision. Look it up. It is called Hamdi v Rumsfeld.
This BBC article stresses the forced feeding, but it also alludes to the torture and the fact there have been four deaths so far that have not been adequately explained. The actual letter goes into more detail on the other accusations.
Look it up yourself, Mr. Lawyer.