WIIIAI points out this hideous statement by David N. Tornberg, deputy assistant secretary of defense for clinical and program policy in the Washington Post article highlighted in Antiwar.com’s headlines today:
He and other military officials argue in the article that when a doctor participates in interrogation, he is acting as a combatant, so the Hippocratic oath does not apply.
WIIIAI says:
The WaPo article on the participation by military doctors in torture sessions in Guantanamo buries the money quote, from deputy assistant secretary of defense David Tornberg, that such doctors are acting as combatants and therefore are not obligated by the Hippocratic oath. (The Post also neglects to say that Tornberg is himself a doctor.) Even if doctors could ever be absolved of their ethical obligations by virtue of being “combatants,” Guantanamo was not a combat zone.
Good point, and another thing occurs to me amid these protestations of non-accountability of combat doctors. The NYT reported enemas being administered in what the Pentagon calls a “coercive technique” and the civilized world calls “torture.”
Mr. Kahtani was, for example, forcibly given an enema, officials said, which was used because it was uncomfortable and degrading.
Pentagon spokesmen said the procedure was medically necessary because Mr. Kahtani was dehydrated after an especially difficult interrogation session. Another official, told of the use of the enema, said, however, “I bet they said he was dehydrated,” adding that that was the justification whenever an enema was used as a coercive technique, as it had been on several detainees.
So, are these combat doctors doing the interrogation enemas? I can’t believe I actually have to ask this question. How low will this administration take us?