A Dream for a Better World

Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a gross breach of medical ethics, a long-secret report by the Red Cross concluded. Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said.  Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers’ intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said.

Although the CIA’s secret prisons, harsh interrogation techniques and Guantanamo Bay are being demantled, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool – the secret renditions in which terrorism suspects were kidnapped and transferred to countries that cooperate with the United States.  Under Obama’s executive orders recently, the CIA still has the authority to carry out the renditions.  Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it took suspected terrorists off the streets.  The secret rendition program became a target of international scorn as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

According to documents that a Senate committee released, the U.S. military hid the locations of detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).  In the documents, a military lawyer said during a meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison that they may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around and that it is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques.  Another person at the meeting, the chief counsel for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

Defense attorneys for the 270 detainees at Guantanamo Bay said the Supreme Court decision that granted detainees habeas corpus rights was a watershed moment that will allow the men, some held for as long as 6 1/2 years, to challenge their detentions before a civilian judge. The court’s ruling immediately gives the detainees access to a federal court in Washington, where lawyers will seek to have judges order the men released from indefinite detention.  Legal experts said it is unclear how the hearings will proceed, but the government could be compelled to present highly classified evidence, and detainees could for the first time be able to publicly call witnesses, present evidence of abuse, and rebut terrorism allegations.

In a 4/2008 NY Times piece, they revealed how the Bush administration orchestrated a public relations scheme to counter negative reports and mounting criticism over Guantanamo Bay, which was being branded as a torture center in the national media in 2005. The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly to the charges. They put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo. To the public, these men were presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as objective military analysts. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. These analysts have also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of them have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.