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As obviously abhorrant as these revelations are let's not kid ourselves into believing that the US has crossed some line here.

The truth is that medical experimentation on prisoners, the mentally ill and homeless is not an entirely new phenomenon.

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Well, I prefer, "The truth is that medical experimentation on prisoners, the mentally ill and homeless is not [a new] phenomenon"; "an entirely" being unncessary and rather very off-base.

It's rather ages old. Sure, ages ago, there weren't MD's like were think of them being today, academically speaking, but there've still been MD's for ages, and it's been ages ago since some started participating in "human experimentation".

For "human experimentation" in general terms, invaders of what's called the USA "experimented" with buying (cheap labour style) Africans who were dumb enough to help the whites invading the U.S. to capture other Africans to be made into forced, indentured slaves, ..., f.e. Those dumb Africans who helped others to be captured, ... were experimented with, exploited, and the Africans captured and forced into slavery were experimented with and exploited. And the U.S. wasn't the first at this. England practiced it, and I once learned that the Dutch and French did it before England did. The French have around 500 years or more of this crap in Haiti, and Haitians still aren't out of slavery today; it's not indentured, but it's nevertheless slavery.

And slavery is also found in the Old Testament, and that's possibly not the first example of it in ancient times. It's just that the Bible might be the first recorded history of slavery, for if it was applied to Jews by Egypt, then I assume that it had also been previously applied to other people; but maybe not (?).

Slavery is a form of "human experimentation" and exploitation, but "human experimentation" as PHR is talking about it [is] also "human exploitation". We can't really separate the two. We can't experiment with people or animals, or nature, without also involving exploitation. It's not a matter of whether exploitation is involved, but whether it is fair, harmless, ..., or not.

Torture and experimentation of it, on humans, is also ages old. And there were probably medical and psychological "experts" involved in many enough historical cases. After all, if a state ruler wanted to torture prisoners, then it would make sense to call for "advice" from medical and psychological "experts", even ages ago. The king might have said, "have so-and-so doctors come here, I want to question them about something", and, so, the so-and-so doctors were brought to the king(s), emperor(s), ..., where they provided "expert" consultation on what might or would drive prisoners to talk, say; or how to inflict the most pain, how to make the prisoners feel most desperate (such as to save themselves and/or loved ones from harm).

History is no excuse for continuing these crimes; instead, we should learn from it and correct our ways! Otherwise, we're hegemons, hypocrites, liars, ..., human fiends; and fiends deserve to be treated for what they are.

There's nothing new about evil. It's become worse, but there's nothing otherwise new about it. And evil includes GREED, f.e. "Money changers", torture, slavery, wars of aggression, attempts for broader domination, ...; there's nothing new about this. But we could hope that we'd newly start to learn from lessons of the past, yet we don't learn, don't improve; we are worse than before, instead. Of course being worse is due to "advancing" technological means and growing armies, ..., but we're nevertheless worse than before.

Lovely. I think not.

Oh well, I guess expecting "more of the same" is ..., well, ... to be expected; damn. East Germans during the WW II era only had state-provided, -manufactured, ... "news", but today, heh, we have the internet, the WWW, which means "[world-wide] web" of information means, and are we improving? I haven't noticed any real improvement.

Sure we have plenty of people now opposed to continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's tragically WEAK opposition, and what do people know about the ongoing genocide in the DRC, Congo, the situation in Honduras, the several U.S. military bases being added in Colombia and what the really only purpose of this U.S. militarisation can be about, which is [not] the so-called drug war? What do people know about AFRICOM? What do people know about what really happened in Indonesia and East Timor over the past few decades (see John Pilger)? What about Diego Garcia and the other islands the UK "conquered" to quickly hand over to the US so that its ruling elites could expand their military buildup around Asia? What do people know about the many enough decades, now, of CIA covert ops of extreme evil? When are we going to talk about the ongoing act-of-war against Haiti, started or, rather, renewed Feb. 29, 2004?

What the heck are people really doing that illustrates real improvement over people of the past?

We have dumb "lefists" attack dumb "right-ists", ignoring that they're actually merged where it matters most of all, the differences being mostly superficial apparences, "front stage" stuff, deception; revealing nothing about the back-stage mergence.

At least the East Germans of the WW II era had the argument that their sole source of information (for most of the population anyway) was state-manufactured, -provided, -controlled. We don't have that argument for defence today. We have no grounds, except damn ignorance of wholly irresponsible kind, for "argument", today.

The Nazis had a lot of history to learn from and not their own history was it. Some people have said that Hitler, ... were inspired much enough from U.S. history, alone, but there was also a lot more history than this one for the Nazis to have been "inspired" by. They were apparently also inspired from General Franco and his extreme, ... fascist war with the Spanish Civil war, which the U.S., Italy, I think Germany, maybe another European country or two, and ... God forbid, some elites at the Vatican and in the Jesuits order, in Spain anyway, all supported. And the Nazis had U.S. "pals", large U.S. corporations and rich people profiting from the Nazi regime; including Prescott Bush, Heinz, and ... I don't know what others, but possibly Maxwell (House), and U.S. corporations, such as IBM and, I think to have read, Boeing.

When blaming the Nazis we really are pointing fingers at ourselves, too; our own countries and governments, that is.

It's another example of apparences being deceiving. In schools, we learn only about how evil the Nazis were, nothing about our governments and corporations in all of this evil. And as usual, "the victors define the history (taught in schools)".

Wade Frazier, who has the website of www.aHealedPlanet.net, has some very interesting and exhausitive enough essays that are related, and one is "American Empire", but while it's a striking, to say the least, essay, there's at least another that's even more strongly related to WW II, I believe. I don't know how it is that I ever came across a link to his website, but he sure seems to have very interesting educational content and a fair, or better, persepctive; he's evidently not trying to demonise anyone, but as real history is, the U.S. is demon, and its allies, war allies, including only economic and geopolitical war, without military actions, are also demon, that is, FIEND. It's not his purpose to do that; it just happens to be unfortunate reality.

Anyway, he briefly explains that Nazi forces were sometimes more humane than the west's allied forces were, and I believe him. He certainly does not say or infer that the Nazis were innocent, and excellently argues that the killing of around 6mn Jews really happened, explaining how or wherein some authors who claim this genocide didn't happen are very credible, but inserted an important lie or two, so by saying mostly truth, the lies were not easily noticed by a lot of readers; leaving serious credibility, but deceptively.

The Nazi regime was dead wrong, but we can't blame it unless we blame our own governments and corporations at the same time. If and when we don't do that, then we're hypocrites, liars, and complicit in the extreme crimes of our governments and corporations. We then therefore have no moral ground upon which to stand for pointing fingers at the Nazis and the other East Germans.

Before trying to remove a foreign or nasty object from the eyes of neighbours, let's make sure to remove the crap in our own eyes, first. Too many people like the habit of demonising others, hypocritically, ....

you are absolutely correct. i said much the same thing - about being the american version of Dr Mengeles.

they can hide and package it behind all kinds of orwellian language (typically american in the penchant for coming up with these euphemisms)...give it all kinds of justifications..but at bottom it is human experimentation for the sake of inflicting more suffering just because they have a "subject" under guard, under duress, under straps, and effectively reduced to being a

specimen for the "gathering of intelligence" - such as "how much a human can tolerate"

in order to have "findings" and "prescriptions" and "suggestions" for more "efficient" extraordinary interrogation methods

for the sake of "The security" of the Empire.

they are are much monsters as the Nazis and Dr Mengele.

and have no shame hiding behind the righteousness claims of being "american".

the only difference between these kinds of "doctors" and the soldiers or Armed Forces Gangsters IN uniform hiding behind "protecting freedom and spreading democracy"

is :

the soldiers use Triggers, use Guns, use Bombs, Use Remote control missiles, to spread killing fire on entire communities and people from a distance

and these "doctors" actually can look at their own victims in the eye - and with a cold calculation - decide that these "prisoners" are fit for being tortured and experimented on..directly..with their own filthy hands.

as some said:

THE ONLY TRUE PURPOSE of TORTURE ........is to Torture.

did Dick Cheney talk of "Terrorists" as "the worst of the worst?"

he apparently forgot some WORSE than even THAT.

they call themselves AMERICANS. and some of them actually swore to the Hypocratic Oath as Doctors.

they have their counterpart in their own leaders:

OBAMA as a lawyer of Constitutional LAW - using his expertise to FLOUT LAW.

these Doctors using their Medical knowledge - using their expertise to INFLICT pain and suffering.

ALL justified by "NATIONAL SECURITY".

what does THAT make of them??

they ARE indeed LIKE the German NAZIS. BUT WORSE

because they WRAP themselves and their country in the high concepts of Democracy, Freedom, Justice, Truth, Fairness....

when it is all nothing of the sort but PURE unalloyed EVIL posing as the "work of god".

i honestly don't know how people like that can actually sleep peacefully and with a clear conscience...or look at their own families ...if their families don't know the nature of their work --

and SEE how they have bought "security"for their families through the dehumanization and inflicting of pain and suffering upon others.

and yet - these are probably the first people who would rail at any small "offense" against any of those close to them, because

"we are american">