by Sheldon Richman

As time goes by, the record of the Bush administration gets worse and worse.
It could turn out that the most egregious offense of the Bush-esque Obama
administration will be that its Justice Department let Bush-Cheney &Co.off scot-free.

It’s not enough that the last gang to
occupy the Executive Branch got
us into two illegal wars, accumulated autocratic powers, violated our
civilliberties, and tortured suspects. Now it appears that it kicked things up anotch.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
says it has unearthed “evidence that
indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and
unethicalhuman experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody.”

Why would the U.S. government do this?

“The apparent experimentation and
research appear to have been
performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify
andshape future procedures and policies governing the use of the
‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques.”

PHR says its report is “the first to
provide evidence that CIA medical
personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in
addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.”

The organization demands that the
Justice Department investigate the
charges. It is also particularly concerned that health professionals
participated to “calibrate and study the infliction of harm.”
That, PHR says, “disgraces the health profession and makes a mockery of
the practice of medicine.” The program violated “the Geneva
Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other international
anddomestic prohibitions against illegal human subject research and
experimentation,” the PHR news release states.

PHR says that declassified documents
show, first, that “Research and
medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of
large-volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the
results.” As a result, saline was added “to prevent putting
detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large
amountsof plain water.”

Second, “Health professionals
monitored sleep deprivation on more than
a dozen detainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This research was
apparently used to monitor and assess the effects of varying levels of
sleep deprivation to support legal definitions of torture and to plan future
sleep deprivation techniques.”

Third, “Health professionals appear
to have analyzed data, based on
their observations of 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and
combined applications of ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques, to
determine whether one type of application over another would increase
the subject’s ‘susceptibility to severe pain.’ The alleged
research appears to have been undertaken only to assess the legality of
the‘enhanced’ interrogation tactics and to guide future application
of the techniques.”

PHR called on Congress to amend the
War Crimes Act (WCA) “to remove
changes made to the WCA in 2006 by the Bush Administration that allow a
more permissive definition of the crime of illegal experimentation on
detainees in US custody. The more lenient 2006 language of the WCA was made
retroactive to all acts committed by US personnel since 1997.” Legal
authorities say that other U.S. statutes besides the WCA make such
experimentation illegal.

After the 9/11 attacks the Bush
administration ignored proven nontorture
techniques for obtaining information from detainees in favor of
techniques
long regarded as torture. Cognizant of the illegality, administration
legal personnel strained to justify “enhanced interrogation techniques”
as something other than torture. Hence the famous “torture memos”
from the Office of Legal Counsel. The monitoring of techniques by
physicians
was apparently to determine which were and were not susceptible to
chargesof torture. This is indistinguishable from medical research on
nonconsenting persons. Of course it is not the first time in history that supposed
healers
have lent their skills to government torturers.

The Obama administration could do
something constructive for a change by
investigating PHR’s charges and, if they are borne out, bringing the
offenders to justice — no matter how high up the chain of command.
Let’s not forget that George W. Bush boasts of having approved
water-boarding for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

If for no other reason, the Bush
administration’s legerdemain over
torture put a stain on America that will not soon be erased. At least we
can make a start.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com1006f.asp