When have we ever seen America abide by trade agreement, treaty, or international law when she found them at odds with her interests?

Free-trade agreements only restrict the other signing party.

Treaties (land, peace, or otherwise) are only paper and do not prevent America from claiming further territory or acting in aggression (while calling it defence).

International law has not yet touched America and perhaps never will while she is on top. A global power-shift might see US officials investigated for crimes against humanity that they oversaw.

America has had a “Defence Department” for decades but has never fought a defencive war with it. America’s defence has always been a matter for other countries’ soil, usually without any preceding aggression.

I fear we will never see justice in this matter because justice does not touch those charged with its administration.

Anyhow, torture is banned by the US Constitution, period. For everybody.
No “Treaties” with hated “foreigners”, “giving up American Rights” are required, for the US Government has not now, nor has it ever had, the right to torture anybody, for any reason whatsoever.

I find the arguments of those who argue the contrary to be more revealing of themselves and their character, than of the Law, or of justice, or of the “Rights of States”.

I don’t know when, perhaps 20 years, perhaps 40 years, but one day the time will come. We will look back at a time when we collectively lost our minds, blackened our souls, and behaved in ways we knew were morally and legally wrong.

Often we hear “it’s a different world now,” or “everything changed on 9/11.” I disagree. The world today is essentially the same as it was on September 10th, 2001. Terrorism existed on that day, as did turmoil in the Middle East. As did the existence of violent radicals around the world.

The only real change I see in the world as we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11 is the sudden increase in the number of people who hate, and hope for pain and destruction to befall, the United States. Any objective analysis of this phenomenon, must conclude that the overwhelming majority of these people who previously held benign opinions of the U.S. have changed their minds because of the wars we chose to wage and the treatment of people, primarily Muslims, we have imprisoned and tortured. If indeed there exists a different world we have, in large part, created it.

However, the most fundamental change I see post-9/11 is not in the world, but rather, in ourselves. I live in Manhattan and I remember how frightening it was in 1993 to realize that a terrorist could attack the WTC. No one called for war in response to that attack, and I believe that had any one suggested we torture people to gather information they would have been called immoral and un-American, and rightly so.

And yet here we are in 2010 discussing, almost matter of factly, the relative merits of torture and whether the efficacy of torture should change our opinion of it. After it’s revealed that not only did we torture people, but we did so under the watchful eyes of doctors who were ordered to take notes on the torture, we also can be heard discussing whether or not this was illegal or immoral.

The world did not fundamentally change after 9/11, but we did. We have changed, and not for the better.

The group says such illegal activity would violate the Nuremburg Code, and could open the door to prosecutions.

I’d like to see justice here, but if the activities of the Bush administration which have already been well-documented aren’t prosecutable then nothing is prosecutable.

I argue that the doctors’ involvement was one of providing cover and endorsement of the torture. Hey if the doc says it’s ok it’s therapeutic! Because it is so easily justified, so cleverly reordered in their minds into a simple case of monitoring vitals and responses, then strong terms are needed to wake these deniers up from their dream. Do you think Mengele knew/believed he was an evil bastard?

If what the US has done is compared to Dr. Mengele…
and then someone demonstrates we did something less sinister…
We run the risk of the US getting a pass because the conclusion will be: “see we’re not the Nazis”, when the goal was never to prove that we were like the Nazis, but that we were engaged in torture.

The hyperbolic comparison risks deviating the argument away from the principle point, because people will focus on the analogy, and not the facts.

No amount of sincere regret and apology can undo what has been done, and there is no sincere regret or apology forthcoming. Everyone is too busy rationalizing or trying to find reasons why someone else was more responsible for this than they were. Everyone is too busy caring about how this affects them to care how they have affected others.

This country has deliberately violated every principle it claims to cherish, and too many people are too arrogant to admit how much went wrong. This kind of denial precludes the ability to repair those wrongs, or even to prevent them from reoccurring.

Nothing is going to happen until more people come to grips with one of the most fundamental elements of adulthood: “you are responsible for your own actions”.

I’m still seeing a lot of hyperbole here though. I think a key question is whether or not it is possible to have a perfect society where everyone enjoys every right always all the time and no one breaks any “laws”. I’m pretty sure the answer is no. So if we look hard enough we will always find something and we should strive to a better world. That’s good.

How about incarceration, is it right to put someone in prison? Captial punishment? Police interrogation techniques?

What are we doing about those countries where torture is happening on a wide and daily basis, not only to extract information but also as a retribution or punishment?

The US is screwed up in many ways and seems to always find creative ways to screw other places up. That said, if most of the world held the same moral standards as the US we’d be ahead. Way ahead in my opinion. If anything this study and the discussion is proof of that.

It just seems we’re letting too many people get away with too many things and essentially looking for the coin underneath the lamppost.

I think bja sniffed out what I was trying to say earlier. Some people disagree about the utility of torture– well, perhaps not in a place like BB– but everyone can agree that it is a great evil and that doctors should really have no place in it.

(I would say that doctors being used to keep the process more humane– as opposed to more effective– doesn’t make it right but it is a step in the right direction. Perhaps I’m naive in assuming that it was the push to keep it limited that got these doctors involved.)

But I still fundamentally disagree with this article, and for two reasons:

1. The implication that this is on the scale of Nazi/Japanese medical atrocities is untrue and more worthy of Glenn Beck than BoingBoing. If you wanted to point out medical ethics violations, all well and good. But the article reads like an indictment of US torture policy while implying that it’s about medical ethics violations. This is misleading, and people who are holding themselves out as moral exemplars and whistle blowers have no reason to be misleading.

2. The reason I object to the liberal use of hyperbole, beyond its deceptiveness, is that it loses its effect with repeated use. It inures the listener to timely journalism.

When every thing becomes compared to Nazism, the true horror of the Holocaust is cheapened and citizens themselves become numb to the repeated attempts to rouse them to action.

Then one day, because every intermediate step to a real Holocaust has been called a Holocaust from day one, the prophets will have lost their voices.

Fear that your audience is too apathetic to listen to you is no reason to use deceptive hyperbole.

When every thing becomes compared to Nazism, the true horror of the Holocaust is cheapened and citizens themselves become numb to the repeated attempts to rouse them to action.

I can’t see how not attempting to rouse people to action is an improvement. If you put as much effort into protesting torture as you do into picking apart the metaphors of people who are doing something about it, you might actually contribute to reducing human suffering.

The implication that this is on the scale of Nazi/Japanese medical atrocities is untrue

There’s not much point in closing the barn door after the cow has already been dragged out and tortured in a secret prison. Nobody is saying that this is on the scale of the Holocaust, although you seem obsessed with raising that imaginary objection. Did you want to wait until it gets to that point before trying to stop it?

I always imagine Yugoslavia before the civil wars there. I bet it looked like our homes more or less to the people living there. Safe, maintained and regular. No way a war would erupt.

So, the real question is how to end our current system of giving up all our power to people who could easily turn into our enemies. That was the whole point of the check and balances of the US gov’t system. Fragile, too fragile to keep us safe. Time to move to the next step, where you are part the decision making beyond just a blind vote.

Mr (Philip) Alston, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings…expresses concern that the US has put forward what he describes as “a novel theory that there is a law of 9/11″, enabling it to legally use force in the territory of other states as part of its inherent right to self-defence.

Although he’s speaking about drone attacks rather than medical torture, it really gets to the mindset that we can (and must) do whatever we want now because none of the rules matter anymore.

I know there have been studies done looking at how perception of pain changes in different situations e.g. pain is felt more strongly when you’re in a situation where you could be doing something to stop it. Also, just twenty minutes ago I was studying up on PTSD, and guess what? PTSD tends to be more severe when the trauma was “of human design” (That’s the DSM I’m quoting)
I think the psychological characteristics of an interrogation situation are pretty well set up to maximize pain and trauma- another person is intentionally causing you pain, and they’re telling you that it’s up to you to stop it by telling them what they want.

To call it “experimentation” when in fact doctors were being asked to determine what was too far so that detainees could be tortured within some kind of magical legal limit…

…kinda boggles the mind. The central issue here is whether it’s ok to torture detainees for information. That’s obvious. Semantic what you may, saying I want to hurt someone until they give me something they don’t want to give me…that’s torture.

But just because Bush administration lawyers wanted some mumbo jumbo to defend themselves with doesn’t mean these medical doctors were experimenting on detainees.

Shame on these physicians for implying that this is something on the scale of Japanese or German medical experiments. Not only were those far more brutal, they were conducted by and under the direction of doctors.

That’s a far cry from pain monitoring on detainees.

I’m not trying to defend torture. But say what you are going to say, and say it clearly. Choosing another tack when your initial thrust fails makes you duplicitous.

(Again, I think the position on torture, and doctor participation in it, is clear. Instead of commenting on that I’m choosing to comment on what seems to be a straw man propped up in hopes of succeeding where other noble endeavors have failed.)

http://www.truthout.org/cries-from-past-tortures-ugly-echoes59738

This, as far as I can tell, is a smokescreen for reiterating the charge of war crimes against the Bush Administration.

Gathering and interpreting evidence is a smokescreen?

Shame on these physicians for implying that this is something on the scale of Japanese or German medical experiments.

And as long as there are apologists to defend the Dr. Mengeles of the world and the regimes that create them, there’s nothing to stop them from escalating their crimes.

I’m choosing to comment on what seems to be a straw man propped up in hopes of succeeding where other noble endeavors have failed.

People are being tortured and you’re complaining that we’re being mean to those who participate in the process. Where’s that straw man again?

And I think the reason is being emphasized so strongly is to sensationalize it in hopes of achieving justice.

I am in favor of justice. But not all means are lawful. And even a little bit of deception– even a little exaggerated comparison common to journalism– is not okay for people who hold themselves as moral exemplars and whistleblowers.

If you preview, it will strip out the formatting unless you go back and submit.

Obama said the exact same thing,
“The US does not torture.”
Do you believe him?

What would you like to call it?

JSMILL: “pain monitoring on detainees.”

Oh.
As in “pain monitoring on detainees” in order to figure out how to inflict the maximum amount of pain without killing them or rendering them useless.
So conducting tests to determine effective levels of pain during torture sessions is not “experimental”? If they weren’t experimenting, if they knew the correct pain levels to, ahem, “monitor”, then what caused “at least 4, maybe as many as 8 detainee deaths”? If they weren’t experimenting, exactly whose pedagogy were they following?

JSMILL:”Shame on these physicians for implying that this is something on the scale of Japanese or German medical experiments. ”

Actually, you implied it, not them, so shame on you. Read the article, they directly compare the Japanese experimentation to the Nazis, not the US. They are referring the creation of the Nuremberg principles. At no point do they imply an equivalency in scale between our actions and those that happened during WWII, only that the same laws apply.

1: Are you denying that experimenting with torture methods on humans without their consent is “human experimentation”?

2: Are you denying that the Nuremberg principles apply?

JSMILL: “I’m not defending torture”
Really?