http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=45dcb45e96721b771f7926a6374cac68Editor's Note: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has refused to ban outright evidence acquired by coercion, even as he requested Congress to refine the definition of war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. But human rights expert Steven H. Miles argues in a new book based on declassified information that torture in prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo has been rampant, but yielded little. In "Oath Betrayed," Miles, a medical ethicist asks the question, “Where were the doctors and nurses at Abu Ghraib?” He spoke with Sandip Roy, an editor at New America Media and host of "UpFront," a NAM weekly radio program on KALW-FM 91.7 in San Francisco.Sandip Roy: Where should the medical staff have been in a prison like Abu Ghraib?
Steven H. Miles: After the abuses of prisoners after World War II, the U.S. played a leadership role in creating the Geneva Conventions, which talks about the treatment of prisoners. Doctors and nurses are frontline human rights monitors in prison. Even if they don't see abuses themselves they are trained to see the signs. They are the eyes and ears for the human rights monitoring system in prison.
Q: What did you find in terms of reliably documented torture practices?
A: There were beatings, kickings, burns, exposure to extreme heat and cold, deprivation of food and water, degradation, sexual rape including rape with baton, nudity, denigration of religion. People were suspended by the wrist from the ceiling or with their arms tied behind their backs or short-shackled to the floor of the cell so they were contorted in a fetal position. Pretty much the only thing I didn't see that one sees in other countries is physical mutilation such as the cutting off of ears or hands.
Q: You write that Donald Rumsfeld created a new kind of army interrogation system. What do you mean?
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