SubscribeSome of the medical involvement in torture defies belief. In one of the few actual logs we have of a high-level interrogation, that of Mohammed al-Qhatani..., doctors were present during the long process of constant sleep deprivation over 55 days, and they induced hypothermia and the use of threatening dogs, among other techniques. According to Miles, Medics had to administer three bags of medical saline to Qhatani — while he was strapped to a chair — and aggressively treat him for hypothermia in the hospital. They then returned him to his interrogators. Elsewhere in Guantánamo, one prisoner had a gunshot wound that was left to fester during three days of interrogation before treatment, and two others were denied antibiotics for wounds. In Iraq, according to the Army surgeon general as reported by Miles, "an anesthesiologist repeatedly dropped a 2-lb. bag of intravenous fluid on a patient; a nurse deliberately delayed giving pain medication, and medical staff fed pork to Muslim patients." Doctors were also tasked at Abu Ghraib with "Dietary Manip (monitored by med)," in other words, using someone's food intake to weaken or manipulate them.The conclusion is indisputable:
After a while, you get numb reading these stories. They read like accounts of a South American dictatorship, not an American presidency. But we learn one thing: once you allow the torture of prisoners for any reason, as this President did, the cancer spreads. In the end it spreads to healers as well, and turns them into accomplices to harm.Thanks for the post.
Our ability to contextualize our own internal discussions of what it means to be a global empire is impaired. We wind up misreading our incredible impact not only on the world but on our own desires to project a civil society around the world. We can’t contextualize our actions internationally if we don’t have an international vision within our own domestic conversation.Spot on.
The Bureau's culture remains committed to law enforcement, not intelligence gathering, and to combating crime rather than countering terrorist conspiracies. Power belongs to special agents from the criminal division who preside over the fifty-six field offices distributed throughout the United States. For the most part, their responsibilities are driven by the crime-busting needs of the localities where they are based. It is therefore not surprising that they insist that "bin Laden is never going to Des Moines." In addition, dealing with crime is better for one's career at the FBI, where accomplishments that are easily measured--for example, the number of arrests an agent makes--count toward promotion, while the murkier tasks involved in counterterrorism do not lend themselves as easily to this box-checking process. Counterterrorism is therefore unlikely to migrate to the top of the typical agent's "to do" list.
Neither will intelligence analysis. In order to detect the formation of jihadist networks in the United States, infiltrate cells, and disrupt conspiracies, investigators need analytical support. This is important because agents themselves do not have time, specialized knowledge, or skills to assemble all the scraps of information available to the FBI into a coherent narrative. This can be done well only by analysts with good language skills, a deep understanding of the way the enemy thinks and operates, and close ties to analysts in other agencies, especially the CIA, with whom they can compare notes and "hand off" targets. The FBI has had a hard time attracting and keeping such analysts, however, because they are not law enforcement officers. John Gannon, an experienced CIA officer who was the head of the National Intelligence Council from 1996 to 2001, puts it this way: "If you're not an agent, you are furniture." He told the successor body to the 9/11 Commission in June 2005 that the FBI "has not made an adequate investment" in a cadre of analysts who would have equal stature within the bureau.
This is not merely the impression of one respected senior intelligence official. In May 2005, the FBI inspector general released a report on the treatment of analysts that verged on satire. Analysts, according to the report, were made to spend much of their time on "escort, trash and watch duty... as the name implies, escort duty is following visitors, such as contractors, around the office to ensure that they do not compromise security. Trash duty involves collecting all 'official trash' to be incinerated. Watch duty involves answering phones." ...
Director Mueller has boasted about the 380 analysts the bureau has hired since 2001 ... but neglected to mention that 291 abandoned their positions during that period and most left the Bureau.
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posted by y2karl at 8:49 AM on June 28, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]