Author: Steven Miles
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 158836562X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
“If law be the bedrock of civil society, it can no more undergird torture than it could support slavery or genocide.” –from the Introduction The graphic photographs of U.S. military personnel grinning over abused Arab and Muslim prisoners shocked the world community. That the United States was systematically torturing inmates at prisons run by its military and civilian leaders divided the nation and brought deep shame to many. When Steven H. Miles, an expert in medical ethics and an advocate for human rights, learned of the neglect, mistreatment, and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere, one of his first thoughts was: “Where were the prison doctors while the abuses were taking place?” In Oath Betrayed, Miles explains the answer to this question. Not only were doctors, nurses, and medics silent while prisoners were abused; physicians and psychologists provided information that helped determine how much and what kind of mistreatment could be delivered to detainees during interrogation. Additionally, these harsh examinations were monitored by health professionals operating under the purview of the U.S. military. Miles has based this book on meticulous research and a wealth of resources, including unprecedented eyewitness accounts from actual victims of prison abuse, and more than thirty-five thousand pages of documentation acquired through provisions of the Freedom of Information Act: army criminal investigations, FBI notes on debriefings of prisoners, autopsy reports, and prisoners’ medical records. These documents tell a story markedly different from the official version of the truth, revealing involvement at every level of government, from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the Pentagon’s senior health officials to prison health-care personnel. Oath Betrayed is not a denunciation of American military policy or of war in general, but of a profound betrayal of traditions that have shaped the medical corps of the United States armed forces and of America’s abdication of its leadership role in international human rights. This book is a vital document that will both open minds and reinvigorate Americans’ understanding of why human rights matter, so that we can reaffirm and fortify the rules for international civil society. “This, quite simply, is the most devastating and detailed investigation into a question that has remained a no-no in the current debate on American torture in George Bush’s war on terror: the role of military physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel. Dr. Miles writes in a white rage, with great justification–but he lets the facts tell the story.” –Seymour M. Hersh, author of Chain of Command “Steven Miles has written exactly the book we require on medical complicity in torture. His admirable combination of scholarship and moral passion does great service to the medical profession and to our country.” –Robert Jay Lifton, M.D., author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, and co-editor of Crimes of War: Iraq From the Hardcover edition.
Author: Gretchen Borchelt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781879707450
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 126
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Book Description
This report is the first to comprehensively examine the use of psychological torture by US personnel in the so-called "war on terror." It reviews the techniques used on detainees, what clinical experience and studies reveal about the long-lasting and extremely devastating health consequences of psychological torture, how a regime of psychological torture came about and was perpetuated, and what the current status of psychological torture is in US policy. Although the evidence is far from complete, what is known warrants the inference that psychological torture was central to the interrogation process and reinforced through conditions of confinement. Evidence exists of its continued use in 2004 and some practices likely remain in place to this day. ... The infamous pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq indelibly brought home how severe forms of psychological coercion--detainees terrorized by snarling dogs and wires dangling from their wrists, subjected to severe sexual humiliation, and disoriented by hooding--are indeed forms of torture. What the images do not show, but what this report reveals, is that psychological torture, even if not as graphic as the images, was at the center of the treatment and interrogation of detainees in US custody in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Iraq since 2002. Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke a year ago, the physical abuse of detainees through beatings, use of stress positions, deprivation of food, and infliction of severely cold and hot temperatures, has understandably gained the most attention, and the United States Army has itself labeled the deaths of 26 detainees as homicides. The evidence now available from witness accounts, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, official investigations, leaked reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), media reports, and inquiries by Physicians for Human Rights, shows that physical forms of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment served only to punctuate the pervasive use of psychological torture by US personnel against detainees.
Author: Shane O'Mara
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674743903
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O’Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer’s trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable—and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O’Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior. Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin’s Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O’Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Detention of unlawful combatants
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Author: Scott Allen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781879707535
Category : Prisoners
Languages : en
Pages : 46
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Book Description
A comprehensive legal and medical analysis of "enhanced" interrogation techniques and similar forms of abuse, particularly psychological techniques, reportedly authorized and used by U.S. personnel. It analyzes the definitions and elements of war crimes, as well as other applicable legal prohibitions, in light of an extensive body of evidence in the medical literature documenting the serious harmful consequences of these techniques.
Author: Steven H. Miles
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520259683
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
"This, quite simply, is the most devastating and detailed investigation into a question that has remained a no-no in the current debate on American torture in George Bush's war on terror: the role of military physicians, nurses and other medical personnel. Dr. Miles writes in a white rage, with great justification—but he lets the facts tell the story."—Seymour M. Hersh "Steven Miles has written exactly the book we require on medical complicity in torture. His admirable combination of scholarship and moral passion does great service to the medical profession and to our country."—Robert Jay Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide and Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans - Neither Victims nor Executioners
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Artists
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309287715
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 67
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Book Description
Over the past four decades, the rate of incarceration in the United States has skyrocketed to unprecedented heights, both historically and in comparison to that of other developed nations. At far higher rates than the general population, those in or entering U.S. jails and prisons are prone to many health problems. This is a problem not just for them, but also for the communities from which they come and to which, in nearly all cases, they will return. Health and Incarceration is the summary of a workshop jointly sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) Committee on Law and Justice and the Institute of Medicine(IOM) Board on Health and Select Populations in December 2012. Academics, practitioners, state officials, and nongovernmental organization representatives from the fields of healthcare, prisoner advocacy, and corrections reviewed what is known about these health issues and what appear to be the best opportunities to improve healthcare for those who are now or will be incarcerated. The workshop was designed as a roundtable with brief presentations from 16 experts and time for group discussion. Health and Incarceration reviews what is known about the health of incarcerated individuals, the healthcare they receive, and effects of incarceration on public health. This report identifies opportunities to improve healthcare for these populations and provides a platform for visions of how the world of incarceration health can be a better place.
Author: Senate Select Committee On Intelligence
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612198473
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 820
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Book Description
The study edition of book the Los Angeles Times called, "The most extensive review of U.S. intelligence-gathering tactics in generations." This is the complete Executive Summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the CIA's interrogation and detention programs -- a.k.a., The Torture Report. Based on over six million pages of secret CIA documents, the report details a covert program of secret prisons, prisoner deaths, interrogation practices, and cooperation with other foreign and domestic agencies, as well as the CIA's efforts to hide the details of the program from the White House, the Department of Justice, the Congress, and the American people. Over five years in the making, it is presented here exactly as redacted and released by the United States government on December 9, 2014, with an introduction by Daniel J. Jones, who led the Senate investigation. This special edition includes: • Large, easy-to-read format. • Almost 3,000 notes formatted as footnotes, exactly as they appeared in the original report. This allows readers to see obscured or clarifying details as they read the main text. • An introduction by Senate staffer Daniel J. Jones who led the investigation and wrote the report for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a forward by the head of that committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Author: Karen J. Greenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521853248
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1306
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Book Description
Documents US Government attempts to justify torture techniques and coercive interrogation practices in ongoing hostilities.
