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A Torture Debate Among Healers
Imagine, a candidate for president who, a year or so ago, no one would have considered electable. Now the person is the front-runner, with a groundswell of grass-roots support, threatening the sense of inevitability of the Establishment candidates. No, I'm not talking about the U.S. presidential race, but the race for president of the largest association of psychologists in the world, the American Psychological Association (APA). At the heart of the election is a raging debate over torture and interrogations. While the other healing professions, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, bar their members from participating in interrogations, the APA leadership has fought against such a restriction.
Frustrated with the APA, a New York psychoanalyst, Dr. Steven Reisner, has thrown his hat into the ring. Last year, Reisner and other dissident psychologists formed the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology in an attempt to force a moratorium against participation by APA members in harsh interrogations. During the initial phase of this year's selection process, Reisner received the most nominating votes. He is running on a platform opposing the use of psychologists to oversee abusive and coercive interrogations of prisoners at Guantanamo, secret CIA black sites or anywhere else international law or the Geneva Conventions are said not to apply.
The issue came to a head at the 2007 APA annual convention. After days of late-night negotiations, the moratorium came up for a climactic vote. We saw a surreal scene on the convention floor: Uniformed military were out in force. Men and women in desert camo and Navy whites worked the APA Council of Representatives, and officers in crisp dress uniforms stepped to the microphones.
Military psychologists insisted that they help make interrogations safe, ethical and legal, and cited instances where psychologists allegedly intervened to stop abuse. "If we remove psychologists from these facilities, people are going to die!" boomed Col. Larry James of the U.S. Army, chief psychologist at Guantanamo Bay and a member of the APA governing body. Dr. Laurie Wagner, a Dallas psychologist, shot back, "If psychologists have to be there in order to keep detainees from being killed, then those conditions are so horrendous that the only moral and ethical thing to do is to protest by leaving."
The moratorium failed, and instead a watered-down resolution passed, outlining 19 harsh interrogation techniques that were banned, but only if "used in a manner that represents significant pain or suffering or in a manner that a reasonable person would judge to cause lasting harm." In other words, this loophole allowed, you can rough people up, just don't do permanent harm.
Immediately after the vote, Reisner spoke out at a packed town hall meeting: "If we cannot say, 'No, we will not participate in enhanced interrogations at CIA black sites,' I think we have to seriously question what we are as an organization and, for me, what my allegiance is to this organization, or whether we might have to criticize it from outside the organization at this point."
Reisner and others began withholding dues. Prominent APA members resigned, and the best-selling author of "Reviving Ophelia," Mary Pipher, returned her APA Presidential Citation award. After several months of bad publicity and internal negotiations, an emergency committee redrafted that resolution, removing the loopholes and affirming the outright prohibition of 19 techniques, like mock executions and waterboarding.
When I asked Dr. Reisner, the son of Holocaust survivors, why he would want to head the organization that he has battled for several years, he told me: "If I have this opportunity to make a change, I have a responsibility to do it. I never had the intention of being involved, but the only way to ensure this be changed was by claiming the democratic process in the name of human rights and social-justice issues. I was hoping that mass withholding of dues and mass resignations would shame the APA to come to its senses. It made them take a big step but didn't go far enough."
He expanded: "American people are sick of the reputation of the United States as torturers, as people who abuse prisoners. American people want to see a restoration of values from war to health care. I think what happens in the APA should point to a direction for the whole country."
The APA's annual meeting is this summer, in Boston. Expect interrogation to be the major issue confronting the members gathered there. Final voting for the APA president starts in October. The APA and the United States will determine their next presidents at about the same time. In both elections, a thorough debate on torture should be central.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America.
© 2008 Amy Goodman
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40 Comments so far
Show AllDr. Reisner is about to enter the wacky world of American politics. Yes, its the APA but his opponents form concentric circles of power in government, the military, the arms merchants, and the right wing media that are focused on any opposition to their cannibalistic culinary tastes. Have you met Rush or Bill yet Dr.? Have you ever been pistol whipped on TV by a Nazi?
I wish him well. I trust he has no personal skeletons, the ritual defamation is horrible enough when the opposition has no facts. Besides, shrinks are just as corrupt as any institutionalized group. They fuck their patients and have refused for 35 years to add a line to their charter that says they shouldn't. They're as bad as Jesuits. That said, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Give hell Dr. Make'em bleed. They have made millions bleed, scream, and die.
Peace.
Banjoman, you are a pissant with the higher virtues of a pedophiliac who doesn't bathe. Amy Goodman has bled for decades to give voice to the powerless and you don't think she's pretty enough. What a disgusting human. You are a tribute to your species, whatever it is. Go back under your rock and molt or something.
If you believe that McClone will prevail against the neocon bosses when it comes to torture, please step right up and buy the acres of oceanfront property in Arizona that I am selling.
Banjoman
John McCain says he opposes torture but his voting record has been inconsistent on the subject.
On the subject of killing people, however, he has been perfectly consistent. He is all for it. He is has been a party to dropping bombs on innocent people for forty years.
BTW, I have the guts to say it, He is your man. Do I get some kind of award for this?
I'll vote for anyone who is in favor of Premptive Peace. Now where did Diogenes put his lamp...
Luckylefty, among your other virtues, you have a great way with words: "you are a pissant with the higher virtues of a pedophiliac who doesn't bathe." !
"The APA and the United States will determine their next Presidents at about the same time. In both elections, a thorough debate about torture should be central."
"Should be" in the sense that such a debate would be the morally proper thing to do, or "should be" in the sense that such a debate is in fact likely to happen in the real world?
If ever there was a time that a candid public discussion of torture as official US government policy "should" have taken place, it was the 2004 Presidential campaign, when George Bush was on the ballot and John Kerry as the Democratic nominee had been handed the Abu Ghraib scandal on a silver platter. This was a genuine "values issue" that voters of all partisan preference and religious stripe could relate to.
It still mystifies me why Little George was given a complete pass, apparently as a matter of campaign strategy, on his personal approval of Alberto Gonzales's work product on the Geneva Conventions scope, and the Yoo/Addington redefinition of strappaddo, waterboarding, mock executions, and similar measures as "torture lite" rather than torture clearly prohibited by existing law.
Don't look now, but whoever the 2008 Democratic nominee turns out to be will have a delicate task indeed trying to depict John McCain's GOP as the party responsible for erecting a shameful, racist torture gulag in the name of the American people. Rather than embracing this moral values issue with its clearcut human rights overtones, the beltway leadership of the Democratic party instead chose to tag along and hold John McCain's coat in the name of bipartisan unity, while McCain and John Warner basically went through the motions of confronting the White House.
Those chickens have now come home to roost. With McCain as the Republican standard bearer, torture policy has now been largely nullified as a viable issue for partisan debate within our two-party democratic political process, even as a wedge issue.
I mean, after all what would Jesus say? And these were the guys who promised to restore moral clarity to the Oval office.
Bill from Saginaw
Banjo man ,go swim in the toilet ! Thank you Lucky for stepping on that vermin!
Amy you are the voice of FREEDOM!
Thank you for your blessed endurance,vigilance and love of DEMOCRACY1
A Torture Debate Among the Principals:
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4583256
John Ashcroft was worried?
It's important for Nazi's to torture.
Moral dilemmas like these in which somebody claims some twisted form of relative goodness in a context of almost total depravity are the reason why torture should be off the table altogether. It is a black hole that easily corrupts not only our actions but the rational thinking that is supposed to regulate our actions. Like war, torture bags the mind in a dark logic of its own. It is we who are the tools of torture, not the other way around.
Banjoman giving advice to Amy Goodman is like Bush giving a history lesson to Howard Zinn.
Any and all interrogation of prisoners of war is illegal.
Period.
Read the Geneva Conventions.
And .. YES .. they are written to apply to times of war.
DUH!
So any claim that the pResident has the right to ignore them "during times of war" is transparently false.
"Banjoman giving advice to Amy Goodman is like Bush giving a history lesson to Howard Zinn."
It's worth repeating.
real Christians don't torture
http://www.religionandsocialpolicy.org/news/article.cfm?id=7824
United Methodists Join Anti-Torture Campaign
Publisher: Ethicsdaily.com
By: Brittani Hamm
First published: February 29, 2008
The United Methodist Church's social policy office is circulating a petition
that tells President Bush, a fellow church member, that torture is immoral and
ineffective.
The petition cites the Methodists' Book of Discipline, which says, "The
mistreatment or torture of persons by governments for any purpose violates
Christian teaching and must be condemned and/or opposed by Christians and
churches wherever and whenever it occurs."
The Methodists' General Board of Church and Society was one of 10 groups that
sent a letter to Bush urging him to sign the Intelligence Authorization bill,
which would effectively ban the CIA from using waterboarding or other
interrogation techniques that many consider torture.
President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, but more than 1,600 signers of
the petition are urging him to sign it. Bush has frequently butted heads with
Methodist leaders, especially over their opposition to the war in Iraq.
Meanwhile, leaders of four other groups have asked to meet with Bush as he
decides whether to veto the bill. A joint letter brought together the National
Council of Churches, the Islamic Society of North America, the Union for Reform
Judaism and the president of evangelical Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.
"Our Scriptures couldn't be clearer in their condemnation of cruelty and abuse,"
said the Rev. Michael Kinnamon, head of the NCC. "The letter we have sent sums
it up very succinctly:
Torture is an intrinsic evil.
'THINK next time Leftie, "Adjective or Adverb".'
I assume, banjoman, you meant to say "Adjective or Noun" (adverbs usually end in "-ly", so it's easy to spot them). Your capitalization's a bit odd, but that that might just be your way of indicating that you're shouting. Your placement of the closing quotation mark before the full stop is intriguing - it's correct usage in the UK but unusual in the USA (as is your use of single rather than double quotation marks). You left out the apostrophe in Bell's palsy (and misspelled palsy). I could go on.
Are you entitled to vote in the USA? (Just curious.)
Look, I'm as thrilled as anyone that Banjokid almost learned to read and write after his 15 minutes of fame in "Deliverance", but I don't see the point of responding to his crudely sarcastic drivel.
plink plink plink-plink plink-plink plink-plink plink...
Let's smash someone's hand with a mallet. Now we'll discuss if the person actually felt pain or whether it's just psycological. If it didn't break any of the bones in his hand then is that better than if it did? Let's ask the person whose hand we just smashed how they feel about it and if they think that it's torture or not. We can also discuss how 'effective ' it was.
In the Bible, Genesis 22, God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son. Just before he did it, he was 'stopped by an Angel'. God then says "Just testin' your loyalty Abe!" Since no actual harm came to the child even though his own father was about to gut him with a knife, this must not be torture either. "The kid's fine! See?"
I'm sure that you can see that this line of thinking is psychotic at best.
Colleen -
Thank you so much for telling us that the American religious community is not silent on the issue of torture.
Since my grandfather was a Methodist minister, I was most gratified to see the United Methodist Church (of which George Bush is a putative faithful member) has taken a prominent role in directly confronting the White House on this pressing matter of national conscience, along with the National Council of Churches, the Islamic Society of North America, the Union for Reform Judaism, and the evangelical Fuller Seminary.
I note too, Colleen that this healthy injection of ecumenical morality into the political realm happened in February of this year. I must have missed this development in the NY Times, the Washington Post, my hometown newspaper, and the smorgasboard of talk radio and cable TV news programs that I regularly sample.
Oh, I forgot. February and March of 2008 were dedicated by the US media and press corps solely to perusing the archived sermons of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright for heretical thoughts and juicy rhetorical sound bites.
So thanks again, Coleen, for reminding CDrs of this little noticed, side show skirmish concerning torture that slipped under the radar during the epic battle still raging elsewhere over separation between church and state, and the new rules for imposing appropriate religious tests to qualify for holding high public office.
Bill from Saginaw
Colleen - it would be great if your minister was in the halls of power - unlike John Hagee - McCain's 'spiritual adviser (of hate.)
Colleen Said: "Torture is an intrinsic evil."
I would argue that the United States of America is an intrinsic evil... founded on genocide and slavery; cursed to roam the earth in search of more blood...
Bill from Saginaw...william street
The religious community imo has been split by the Bush administration.
But Bishop Desmond Tutu and Pope John and the Archbishop of Canterbury were all firmly opposed to the war in Iraq.
On an early march on washington in opposition to the impending war I saw bus loads of people from churches from other states who had come to try to stop the war in Iraq.
Just further proof of how manipulated the news is in America that famous religious leaders could not get on tv and we instead saw a parade of military generals in support of the war.
I remember on Fox news they were saying Bishop Tutu was senile. But I heard him speak in NYC and he was very lucid and convincing that this coming war was wrong.
Its my belief that the US is not a moral leader and is quite immoral. The government is going against Christian principles. Too much pride to begin with...and a love of money
Looks like I was fortunate enough to check in after banjoman's rant disappeared. Maybe luckylefty succeeded in sending him under a rock to molt (my favorite suggestion).
I was shocked to hear that the APA doesn't ban sexual predation on a very vulnerable client population. There is no way a sexual relationship between a psychologist and a client could be considered consensual. And now I'm wondering if psychologists who work for ad agencies targeting children are also members in good standing. And they're fighting for the right to participate in torture? They sound like a bunch of Nazis to me. I should think any psychologist with integrity should be horrified to be identified with this "association".
It seems to me that Dr Reisner would put his energy to better use starting a new professional association that decries the above heinous practices. He could call it "The American Association of Ethical Psychologists".
kathyodat
colleen: was there too and saw the same thing. Humbled and embarassed me that busloads of humanists weren't also arriving. As a matter of fact, the bus caravan I was on was organized by a Christian organization at Pitt University, and I spent the trip to DC getting to know a Quaker from my home state of Ohio.
Vince Lawrence
The Quakers in particular have a record of being on the right side of some historical moral issues.
....................................................
ANYONE INTERESTED IN SIGNING A PETITION TO HAVE YOO REMOVED FROM UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW?
sign here:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2165/t/1027/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24188
Dear Dean Edley ,
In order to protect the reputation of your institution, I urge you to dismiss Professor John Yoo from your faculty. His demonstrated and fundamental lack of respect for the law makes him an entirely unqualified instructor and mentor for the future legal leaders of this country.
I need not fill you in on the details of his involvement in the development of the Bush administration's torture policy. Almost single-handedly, he provided the legal justification the administration needed in order to give its interrogators free rein to ignore domestic laws and international treaties.
Although Professor Yoo is a tenured member of your faculty, I believe that his dismissal is entirely justified. This is not a matter of firing someone with unpopular views. This is a situation where a member of your faculty twisted the law in order to sanction what is highly likely to be considered a war crime.
As a strong supporter of the Constitution, I appreciate that every American citizen is entitled to a proper legal defense. Thus, the involvement of a professor in a case where crimes are alleged to have been committed would not give rise to a call for dismissal. But here we have a situation where one of your professors aggressively encouraged illegal behavior before the fact.
John Yoo is a stain on your law school and should be dismissed immediately.
Pardon my limited legal and medical knowledge but I have often considered "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" to be a weakness which could be legally exploited in attacking the perpetrators of torture. To the best of my knowledge most forms of organ failure in themselves are painless (although most people would logically think this not to be the case). Heart failure (as opposed to a heart attack) is painless. Liver and kidney failure per se are painless. Impairment of bodily function secondary to for example a stroke is painless. Death itself,one would expect to be completely painless.
On the basis of this, perhaps a legal case could be made that no pain should be inflicted at all on any prisoners.
Anyone legally and medically more knowledgable than me care to comment?
"WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned."
I wonder who authorized the treasonous outing of CIA agent Plame and the anthrax bioterror assault on the Senate Judicial Committee. Is the House 'in' on this or will they take impeachment action.
I went to the APA website and read some of the code of ethics. Luckylefty, sexual relations with clients, former clients and relatives or significant others of clients are violations of ethical standards. Under certain circumstances sexual relationships with former clients after two years of no contact are considered acceptable. There is a list of criteria for that. I feel like that may be creating a slippery slope, but ethical standards up to two years after therapy was quite clear.
guevara, there is a condition, fat embolism where the capillaries in the organs are occluded and it does cause organ failure. It is an excruciating condition and usually fatal. I had a patient with that and it is an unforgettable experience.
kathyodat
Didn't Josef Mengele do 'medical' research in Dachau? Treblinka? Bergen-Belsen? Aushwitz?
Didn't many of his contemporaries end up living very comfortably in the US after 'Project Paperclip' snapped them up to work for the US military?
So why is this any surprise.
The Nazis didn't lose.
They just changed their mailing address.
BeForKids April 10th, 2008 8:41 pm - Thanks for that. When I last checked in on the matter it had been nixed again. The language sounds quite clear. I will probably check this myself, but do you know if there are reporting agencies, as for medical mal-practice? We all know about "Rules" and enforcement, they are not necessarily the same. Still good to see they are at least talking the talk.
As for the bent shrinks who work for madison avenue, those are kiddie rapers. I don't care what associations they join or the letters after their names. People who would do that to our children are a clear and present danger to our country. Because I hold a fine edged Roman sword, does that mean I must plunge it into someone's guts? Not necessarily, but if I caught one of them doing that to a child, I just might. Under the terms of Nullification I would hope most Americans would not convict.
Galen April 10th, 2008 8:54 pm "The Nazis didn't lose. They just changed their mailing address."
Even truer than many might suspect.
Peace.
Right, Galen!
Well, that tags it. Write a post that you people don't agree with and it is mysteriously deleted. Open-minded? Shame on you!
You people preach "dissent". What a bunch of 'hooeey'. But I guess not if the "dissent" doesn't go in line with your way of thinking.
Common Dreams has just shown it's hand and it's "true colors."
Oh well, it was only a matter of time.....Be careful what you ask for.....you may get it!
A psycholgist, of all people, should now that any harsh interrogation will cause lasting harm.
I sort of agree with banjoman.
Not with whatever horrid things he wrote in his deleted post, but with its deletion.
Beyond the censorship issues, it just makes things confusing.
Half of the posts were referencing something that wasn't there, and managed to get many of -banjoman-'s words out from under the censor stamp anyway, so just what is the point?
And for the record Amy Goodman is quite attractive.
Don't think "old" think "knows stuff" -grrrrowl!
-matti.
Thanx Matti, and I agree with everything you posted, even Amy Goodman's physical attributes. She IS a nice looking woman, and I felt for her when I saw she was afflicted with Bell's palsy.
We all went thru it when it hit my kid sister over 20 years ago, and it's definately no fun. Probably easier to take for someone of Amy Goodmans age vice a teenage girl, but not much easier.
I do not agree with much of what she preaches, but, as a veteran, I'd go back in to preserve that right...I'm just too old....wife and kids depending on me here. Responsible? I'd like to think that.
I'd sit down and tip a beer with anyone posting here, even if some think of me as vermin...My shoulders are too broad to be offended by that or much else anymore.
Thanx again there, Matti...you sound like a good egg to me...I hope Common Dreams lets this on stay posted...for both of us.
What is the moral difference between physicists and engineers developing new generations of WMDs and psychologists overseeing interrogations of detainees? I think that scientists have the responsibility to resist the pressure to aid and abet violations of human rights on both the microscopic and macroscopic scales. Otherwise, the "Age of Reason" excels the "Age of Superstition" only in its capacity to inflict suffering. But, regrettably we seem to be fusing the worst traits of each epoch.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but aren't psychiatrists qualifed medical doctors? You know, the guys with the Hippocratic oath that starts with "First, do no harm."
Vinlander- The Hippocratic oath has been supplanted by the AMA oath: 'First, get paid.'
Psychiatrists are doctors, and can prescribe drugs; psychologists are not doctors, and cannot prescribe drugs.
In the US military, doctors treating US military personnel (as opposed to their dependents) are expected to reject the Hippocratic oath. They do harm and kill, by enabling the killers.
Of course, most lawyers and chaplains in the US military betray their professional ethics too.
Psychologists are found in great numbers in advertising, industrial psychology and political consulting where they do research about how best to manipulate you and me. I once entered a doctoral program in psychology and was completely turned off by the careerism that used "subjects" and then threw them away. In fact, some projects required keeping "subjects" in a miserable state just so they could be followed over time. Torture lite.
I hope that those psychologists who still consider themselves as part of a helping profession take over the APA.