The current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association carries an important new study (sub only) by Len Rubenstein and Brigadier General Stephen Xenakis, probing more deeply into the role that physicians working for the CIA played in torturing and abusing prisoners. The evidence that CIA doctors were engaged in the torture process was marshaled in a prior report by Physicians for Human Rights. Evidence subsequently emerged suggesting that they had criminally experimented on human subjects, as they sought to calibrate torture sessions to the guidelines established by Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and Stephen Bradbury–guidelines since rescinded and acknowledged by the Justice Department to constitute torture practices. But Rubenstein and Xenakis focus on a document released (PDF) by the Obama Administration, which shows that the CIA’s Office of Medical Services (“OMS”) provided guidance that facilitated torture and mistreatment.
The Normalization of Torture, Death Squads and Contempt for the Rule of Law
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