tv Documentary RT January 22, 2014 9:29am-10:00am EST
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today in the lead. after seven years in prison mohammed jawad was finally released eric montel though kept his promise to be in kabul when the young man arrived and his mother couldn't even recognize him because he had physically changed so much because he was just a boy and he apparently had a certain shape to the back of his head from either a fall what have you and she. was in total disbelief until she felt the shape of his head and then at that point when the collapsed on the floor.
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in the case of involvement of health professionals when does it rise to the level of national scandal. how many more revelations about physician involvement about research about approval of and target for people who are clearly injured to be injured again. how much more. the american public does not hear much about dr involvement in detainee abuse since the abu ghraib scandal both administrations have gone to great lengths to present detainee treatment as humane. we are going to try that like right now we're going to treat them mainly. it. reacted in a circle. the press has given tours of modern medical facilities in guantanamo and army psychologist who report on the condition of detainees make no mention of
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symptoms of trauma or. the diagnosis we see are 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 disparate but in some data is. not really well. made a few of them have maybe. maybe a few of them. i can't i don't know really any specific details though where they have done anything. out of desperation. doctors that detention sites are divided between those who work in treatment services and those who work under the intelligence command although the two are officially set. there are many reports of doctors in the medical services supporting the programs of the intelligence command.
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released detainee adel oh there's 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 real journalists are not allowed to interview detainees in the detention sites reports of how detainees are force fed
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at guantanamo come from released prisoners and their defense lawyers. i represented there was a saudi national who was in u.s. custody. from two thousand and two until two thousand and nine he was on a hunger strike as a form of peaceful protest and sort of his on lawful an indefinite imprisonment away from his family was from his life and also in protest of the torture that he survived and and he said you know that he continues under a strike on to the united states stop referring to him as an enemy combatant. you know over the course of my two years representing him and meeting with them again. you know his health fluctuated sharply you know we had some meetings where he was on a gurney you know there were some meetings where he could not move in where he was invisible i saw him vomit repeatedly so it was it was
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a physically traumatizing experience for him but somehow you know really almost magically he remained lucid throughout. you know initially force feeding was done on a bed you know relatively unfettered position 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 head and neck they took away lubrication they took away local anaesthetics they
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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 do at that point was to order basically a riot squad six man teams in full riot gear with padding shields. helmets visors mace and they would basically march into a sob as loudly as possible to intimidate and and terrorize the prisoner population and then they would go into the cell. and drag them out to the restraint.
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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 though obviously fall with us. the period of guantanamo is still very thick and on till the place is closed down. and. we were able to get a federal judge to order the government. to either force
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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 but the other hunger strikers who are 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 . it kuantan i'm. i'm dying here every day mentally and physically. i have got kidney problems from the filth feet below water. i had lung problems from the chemicals they spread all over the floor. i already had three ticket forty because they sleep on
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a steel bed in the use freezing air conditioning as part of the interrogation process i have ruined this 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 would just like to die quietly by myself. i was no feeding. if assisted feeding. from everything we've seen about how this policy of torture was designed and implemented that health professionals are 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
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a grinding halt pad the senior physicians come out forcefully and more or less unified that that clinical practitioners or are 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 doc going to comply with this it violates all our ethical principles it is wrong and not no medical people 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 served when the brigade commander on the lack of discipline. no training whatsoever general antonio taguba was
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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 it is i really agree with them that their careers one way or another were hurt. 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 or we got professionals who are trained in this kind of
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work to get information that will protect the american people and by the way we have gotten information from these high value detainees that have helped protect you 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 for the last five years. or so and moreover any piece of intelligence which is obtained. 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. speaking truth to power. dick cheney or george bush
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anyway but. if. the past is going to stop doing that because the work. the interim agreement with the red. prospects can't israel and its congressional i specifically the senate killed the deal for some miraculous reason all sides agree to keep to the agreement what can we expect next. in the future. so we hit the road to focus on new technology. on this show posses complete with school. and we learn about the next in. this is the potential to save lives. here in. the
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future. after three years of. the death toll of over one hundred thousand. homeless a and commonsense come together one that. war is not the answer. does peace had the chance. in two thousand and two f.b.i. and other federal investigators tried to stop the busa and ethics 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 when we
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actually read the plan and it was chilling it was not a model for an ethical interrogation but it was based on instinct in still going on 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 a moment 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 take
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place are going to have to abide by the our. we believe the army field manual. for flights of our military there at week hour by law. 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 abuse of 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
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my reading of the appendix and of the. field manual was that it did open the door to some of these techniques and really mostly being used by the cia and. the question a 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 sams that resembled the isolation and deprivation found in guantanamo. do the special administrative measures supersede the orders of a doctor responsible for the detainees care and.
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if extreme isolation is harming a detainee can u.s. 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 psychology is 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.
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well i mean what happened was it inherit a word and response to my letter in the beginning of october i got a call would you like to go next week i guess that's the way things you know work in the military i said absolutely we landed and we went took a boat trip across the bay to the prison and then we had a briefing on the present 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 them in
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any way. that you know so this that they were trying definitely to convince us that 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. president of 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
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a lawyer and said no. and actually many i was contacted by a number of military psychiatrists a thank you because now we can say to a 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 that its task force on
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psychological ethics and national security or and. so for us the question is not whether psychologists may be involved in these 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 and has been intimately involved with the military intelligence establishment something that's sort of invisible to all marge number of practical psychologist. a.p.a.
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officials appointed a task force guaranteed to approve psychologist involvement in detainee interrogations. dr morgan banks helped to write the standard operating procedures manual 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
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needs producing some pain just seems to be you know what pet first 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. in 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
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or no or term to question the doctors about what they do reveal what they did 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. for how professional boards licensing boards and all of those states. are 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
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texas state board of examiners dismissed a complaint against dr james mitchell the psychologist to according to government documents led the team that water boarded a detainee eighty three tons and talk 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 to ask.
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the. united states is a very good example here because in the early years the baby had a pretty strong genuine democracy about by now i would argue has degenerated into a system where money and power mattered much more than didn't do the deputy of the majority of the founding fathers of the united states would constantly say that
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they were not trying to instill a democracy that thought democracy was horrible they wanted top leaders that you were plucked and they purposely designed the institutions to as they put it on the exclude of the majority from participation. i know. tanya. well tell me how you know my little grandson. i don't load i don't like. being cut off. except as an ecovillage that the spiritual side is destructive. i tried to convince her try to preach that it was a sect but it's dangerous that she had to leave it was
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a story she had lost her mind all. you know you she will come back i know it and i will wait but even if it means i must wait until my dying day. on june sixteenth one thousand forty one we had a graduation party at school and the war broke out. the 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
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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 night it was incredibly heavy bombing. it was a direct hit on that very shelter and everyone was buried underneath. all of them were dead. a violent clashes that engulfed central kiev as ukrainian police tear down
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barricades and chased riot says on a fourth day of anti-government protests. people have died. the crisis is being fueled by nationalists and radicals keen to take the opportunity to push for revolution that. and also in the headlines syria's government and opposition sit face to face for the first time since the start of the conflict but the start of a long anticipated peace talks in switzerland have exposed the party's very different views of the future.
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