tv Documentary RT January 22, 2014 5:29am-6:01am EST
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the press is giving tours of modern medical facilities in guantanamo and army psychologist who report on the condition of detainees make no mention of symptoms of trauma. diagnosis we see at the same ones we see in the state the main or most problem diagnosis diagnosis here are personality disorders. do you see any signs of desperation but in some of these high it's. not really all. make up a few of them have may be well. maybe a few of them. i care i don't know really any specific details though where they haven't done anything. out of desperation. doctors at detention sites are divided between those who work in treatment services and those who work under the intelligence command although the two are officially
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separate there are many reports of doctors in the medical services supporting the programs of the intelligence command. released detainee adel al goes over one day i remember i was crying terribly from the pain the doctor turned up with pain killers but he said i will give you the medication but first you need to sign a confession that you're a member of al qaeda i told him i'm not a member of al qaeda and cannot confess to a lie he put the medication in his pocket and walked out of what's interesting is that. the medical personnel guantanamo never go by their real names so they always rely on pseudonyms. you know dr scarlett you know dr geneva. so it's very hard to identify medical personnel were
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journalists are not allowed to interview detainees in the detention center reports of how detainees are force fed at one time in the come from released prisoners in their defense lawyers. i represented the saudi national who was in u.s. custody. from two thousand and two until two thousand and nine he was on hunger strike as a form of peaceful protest at sort of his unlawful an indefinite imprisonment away from his family or from his life and also in protest of the torture that he survived and and he said you know that he would continue strike on to the united states stopped referring to him as an enemy combatant. you know over the course of my two years representing him and meeting with him again. you know his health fluctuated sharply you know we had some meetings where
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he was on a gurney you know there were some meetings where he could not move in where he was invisible pain i saw him vomit repeatedly so it was it was a physically traumatizing experience for him but somehow you know really almost magically he remained lucid throughout. you know initial force feeding was done on a bed you know relatively unfettered position and so the authorities went from a protocol that accommodated the prisoners and made the force feeding experience more comfortable more more tolerable to another protocol which was designed specifically to inflict maximum pain and discomfort so as to pressure the hunger strikers to suspend their hunger strikes. the subsequent protocol that my client described involved what he referred to as the torture which was which was a chair which was a six point restraint chair where prisoners were restrained and the arms legs torso
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head and neck they took away lubrication they took away local anaesthetics they took away soothing lozenges all to make the experience as uncomfortable as possible . some of the men refused to come out. because they objected to being force fed and in a brutal manner and so they wish to remain in their cells and so what the what the medical authorities are guantanamo doing point was to order basically a riot squad six man teams in full riot gear with padding shields. that's visors mace and they would basically march into a sob as loudly as possible to intimidate them and terrorize the prisoner
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population and then they would go into the cell of the to and drag them out to the restraint. and then one of the u.s. military medical personnel would insert the force feeding tubes and a single feeding session would last you know two to three hours depending on how much nutrition was to be administered that experience was so traumatic that a lot of the prisoners developed inflamed nasal passages the medical personnel there would leave the tubes in their noses for days on end but he was in a position where that was the only possible gesture of protest that was left to. the people in guantanamo bay we have not forgotten about you even released the ball with you yet. the period of guantanamo. everything and on till the place is closed down. and. we were able to get
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a federal judge to order the government. to either force feed misters or here in humane conditions on a bed. in a clinic and not in the restraint chair or justified true the judge to the federal court why it was necessary to force feed him in that restraint chair but the other hunger strikers who were not subject to that order they were still being force fed pursuant to the old protocol and to my knowledge that force feeding protocol that's a protocol that is still alive and that is still being applied in guantanamo today . here was released from guantanamo after being imprisoned for seven years without charge. but shocker a mare a leader of the hunger strikes remains in isolation the only british resident still to take the kuantan and. i'm dying
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here every day mentally and physically. i have got kidney problems from the filthy deal water. i had lung problems from the chemicals they spread all over the floor. i already had three ticket forty because they sleep on a steel bed and they use freezing air conditioning as part of the interrogation process i have ruined it's from the permanent twenty four hour fluorescent light. i have been made paranoid so i can trust nobody even my lawyer because the americans play with my mind. i mean just like today quietly by myself. i was no feeling no for stoops no help. no intensive assisted feeding.
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from everything we've seen about how this policy of torture was designed and implemented that health professionals were a critical cog in the wheel and that if you were to take the health professionals out the system as we know it would have come i believe would have come to a grinding halt had the senior physicians come out forcefully and more or less unified that that clinical practitioners were not going to participate or condone any of these practices that there could have very likely been at least a curtailment and a serious limitation of their happening for the army it would have meant that the army surgeon general would have said. absolutely we are not going to comply with this it violates all our ethical principles it is wrong and not know medical people
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will be involved in these practices. some intelligence and military officials did protest the torture program in simple words your own soldiers language how did this happen for your leadership sir when the brigade commander. lack of discipline. no training whatsoever general antonio taguba was forced into retirement for his rigorous investigation of the abuses the military command severely punished sergeant sam prevents for refusing to attract his testimony about tortures at abu ghraib i do know of military doctors who. either directly or indirectly did resist cooperating voiced their dissent and. they feel and i really agree with them that their careers one way or another were
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heard. in contrast the officers who developed and conducted the enhanced techniques program remain well protected the cia has provided doctors james mitchell and bruce jessen with a five million dollar legal defense fund in case they are charged with torturing detainees. we go to the professionals who are trained in this kind of work to get information little protect the american people and by the way we have gotten information from these high value detainees that have no protection in two thousand and six president bush announced that the enhanced techniques provided invaluable intelligence but by then the program was so widely condemned that a high army official could publicly refute him without getting punished no good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices i think history tells us i think the empirical evidence of the last five years. or so and moreover any piece
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of intelligence which is obtained under duress or through the use of. techniques would be of questionable credibility. and additionally it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used as speaking truth to power and they didn't deter dick cheney or george bush from doing this anyway but. here look might do that if if in the past this kind of stuck to it that because they work. tanya laid it well tell me how you are my little grandson. i know you i don't like. being cut off.
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except as an ecovillage that the spiritual side is destructive. i tried to convince her to try to prove that it was a sect but it's dangerous that she had to leave it was a story she had lost her mind will. you know you she will come back i know it was the wrong way but even if it means i must wait until my dying day. feet. on june sixteenth one thousand forty one we had a graduation party at school and the war broke out. loud. the
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shops were always full of goods. in september leningrad was blocked. one day mom went and saw that all the shelves were empty. in november they bombed the diversity warehouses it was the main storage place for all the food in the city people eating the earth because it had small traces of sugar in it i tried to eat it as well but i couldn't. the third look at that was incredibly heavy bombing. it was a direct hit on that very shelter and everyone was buried underneath. all of them with dead.
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kids right on the seat. in the first street. and i think the church. on the reformers put their. instrument. to be in the. wrong path. in two thousand and two f.b.i. and other federal investigators tried to stop abusing methods that military interrogators were adopting at guantanamo. the federal investigators proposed an alternative way to interrogate a high value detainee it was rejected by the military in favor of more physical coercion the alternate plan remained classified until two thousand and nine but
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when we actually read the plan it was chilling it was not a model for an ethical interrogation but it was based on instinct instilling a complete dependency and ability over many months and i think what we're finding out is that what colonel larry james who claims to have abolished abuses of kuantan amoa in january of two thousand and three what larry james felt was abusive was only the most extreme techniques the so-called physical techniques slapping are banging against a wall not sleep deprivation and isolation and sensory deprivation. significant but incomplete reform banning extreme physical tortures but not some of the psychological abuses can also be seen in two thousand and six revisions of the army field manual endorsed by the obama administration any interrogations straight plays are going to have to abide by the our. we believe the army field manual.
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for flights of our military there at we are by far. all that says we don't torture when president obama came into office he also indicated that the interrogations by the united states forces including the cia should follow the the parameters laid down in the current army field manual that's the same army field manual that carries appendix. with all of its different abusive forms of interrogation and it also is the same army field manual that changed the definition of the use of fear up from the previous army field manual to allow for the induction of new phobias new fears it changed the language of the previous army field manual which had banned sleep deprivation now there was no such ban and my reading of the appendix and of the. field manual was that it
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did open the door to some of these techniques are really mostly being used by the cia. the question of detainee abuse and the role that doctors play in it is no longer limited to the military or cia operations overseas detainees awaiting trial in the united states may be subject to special administrative measures or same's that resemble the isolation and deprivation sounded in guantanamo. do this special administrative measures supersede the orders of a doctor responsible for the detainees care and. if extreme isolation is harming a detainee can u.s.
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prison doctors stop it although much is classified there is evidence that decisions by doctors treating detainees may be countermanded by government officials. when i hear about psychologists participating in syria a black site in the kidnapping of sure i know that something is wrong in the state of psychology and how psychology is being used. many human rights and health care organizations have protested the role of doctors in the torture program in two thousand and five dr steven sharfstein the newly elected president of the american psychiatric association wrote to secretary of defense donald rumsfeld raising concerns about psychiatry is assisting interrogations at guantanamo. well i mean what happened was an inherent
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a word and response to my letter in the beginning of october i got a call which i like to go next week i guess that's the way things you know work in the military absolutely we landed and we went took a boat trip across the bay to the prison and then we had a briefing on the president a very expensive one. we heard was that there was the there were these behavioral science consultation teams biskit teams they were and were never in the room when interrogations took place they were in another room they were listening in and they had direct way to to talk to the interrogators and to advise them about what what what ways to proceed and their role they emphasize was to try to establish rapport with these detainees and not really stress that in any way. that you know so this that they were trying definitely to convince us that
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what they were doing was humane ethical you know on the on the up and up. dr sharpstein and his colleagues were not convinced that psychiatry's should assist in interrogations. i didn't think the psychiatrist of any competency to be doing this kind of work and we're trained to diagnose tree. we were going to be on the ethical. position of do no harm. what training do we have and interrogations and police interrogations or any of those kinds of issues in two thousand and six after much internal debate the american psychiatric association passed a resolution stating that it was not appropriate for psychiatry's to directly assist in the interrogation of detainees these american psychiatric association just drew a lawyer and said no. and actually many i was contacted by
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a number of military psychiatrist say thank you because now we can say to my superiors i don't want to go against the the policy position and the ethical. rules of the association though the standards of the a.m.a. and the american psychiatric association are as they should be strong unequivocal prohibitions against direct involvement in interrogation but the fact remains that neither of those associations have taken ethical action against members who allegedly or directly involved in the abuse of prisoners in u.s. custody. only one professional association approved if it's doctors assisting interrogations the american psychological association or a.p.a. in two thousand and five it followed the recommendations of its task force on psychological ethics and national security or. so
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for us the question is not whether psychologists may be involved in the process he's it how psychologists may be involved in these activities in an ethical manner we know from records and accounts of what went on at the task force that there was no never was there a question a discussion about why there was ethical for psychologists to participate in these interrogations that that was assumed from the very first moment the a.p.a. has never except when absolutely forced to by. by the public record that they're even problems in the policy psychologist profession has been intimately involved with the military intelligence establishment something that sort of invisible to all marge number of practical psychologist. a.p.a. officials appointed a task force guaranteed to approve psychologist involvement in detainee
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interrogations. dr morgan banks helped to write the standard operating procedures and then you will for biskit interrogation doctors dr scott shoemaker attended the launch of enhanced interrogation procedures at the cia black site dr larry james was the first psychologist to advise on interrogations at abu ghraib. dr breslin fever another member of the task force majority asserted that a psychologist assisting interrogations has no responsibility for detainee welfare contradicting the most basic ethical principles of psychology practice america happens to be my client america's americans or who i care about i have no fondness for the enemy and i don't feel like i need to take care of their mental health needs producing some pain just seems to be you know what pet first
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blush. something that would be wrong because we do no harm but if it does the most good for the most people it's entirely ethical and to do otherwise would be unethical. officials stress the organization strong resolutions against torture and claim that psychologists keep the interrogation safe ethical and effective in two thousand and eight thousands of a.p.a. members effectively rejected this claim and voted down the interrogation policy. in spite of this referendum psychologists still assist detainee interrogations and their work remains highly controversial. today behavioral science consultants and research psychologists have a prominent role in the obama administration program for interrogating high value detainees. there's been no accountability at all no investigation there were aware no attempt to question the doctors about what they did reveal what they did
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fully. doctors including those in the cia and military must be licensed by their state boards which are responsible for disciplining any involved in malpractise. to my knowledge to date there have been complaints filed against health professionals in california new york louisiana alabama and ohio. before professional boards licensing boards and all of those states. not one of them to our knowledge has even investigated officially seriously investigated any of the allegations some boards have not bothered to give written answers but over the phone one consulted have said that they don't have jurisdiction we don't believe that's true in any of the cases the texas state board of examiners dismissed
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a complaint against dr james mitchell the psychologist to according to government documents led the team that water boarded a detainee eighty three tons until congress until the national institutes of health institute of medicine realized that this is arguably the single greatest scandal in the history of american medical ethics. and act that way. we will be. not even knowing what we don't know about. even knowing the questions i asked.
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the interim agreement with iran is now in effect what are its prospects can't it israel and its congressional i want specifically the senate to kill the deal and if for some miraculous reason all sides agree to keep to the agreement what can we expect next. the united states is a very good example here because in the early years the baby had
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a pretty strong genuine democracy a bad by now i would argue has degenerated into a system where money and power mattered much more than britain did the deputy of the majority of the founding fathers of the united states would constantly say that they were not trying to instill democracy that saddam obviously was horrible they want to topple your state your reply and they purposely designed to be institutions to as they put it on the exclude of the majority of from participation. legend jimmy savile here's a guy who committed pedophilia with over four hundred children and he's taken to the court to take on the old bailey and his defense is if you prosecute me i'm going to go to switzerland that's what i just be a say if you prosecute me and our scads and scores and hundreds of incidents of fraud we threaten to leave the country and the government says pull we.
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rise police and the ukrainian congress will push forward and ted down barricades set up by on to government rises all under a reign of rocks and molotov cocktails. with a lot of delegations. to separated syrian peace talks exposing transoms between the grand schemes of the country's future envisioned by that participants that. means the new mothers in damascus forced to give bus and appears by the bobbins but now is trying for their children to live and the reunited syria.
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