American Psychological Assn and interrogations on Prisoners

Psychological warfare
by Mark Benjamin

July 26, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- The 150,000-member American Psychological Association is facing an internal revolt over its year-old policy that condones the participation of psychologists in the interrogations of prisoners during the Bush administration's "war on terror."

Last summer, the APA adopted new ethical principles drafted by a task force of 10 psychologists, who were selected by the organization's leadership. That controversial task-force report, which is now official APA policy, stated that psychologists participating in terror-related interrogations are fulfilling "a valuable and ethical role to assist in protecting our nation, other nations, and innocent civilians from harm." But Salon has learned that six of the 10 psychologists on the task force have close ties to the military.

Critics of the APA's interrogation policy are planning an all-out assault during the organization's annual meeting Aug. 10-13 in New Orleans, using tactics that include taking out a full-page advertisement in the local newspaper.

Opponents argue that when psychologists use their technical training to help break down the resistance of a prisoner, they are performing in a role diametrically at odds with their professional mission to serve as a healer. "I do not believe that psychologists should be involved in interrogations which are intrinsically coercive and inherently harmful to the person being interrogated," said Steven Reisner, a psychologist and senior faculty member at Columbia University's International Trauma Studies Program.


Several civilians close to the APA task force criticized the final product for failing to make a clear statement about the excesses of the "war on terror" and failing to explicitly say what psychologists can and cannot do. "It is a bunch of platitudes without any situational reality to it," said Jean Maria Arrigo, a civilian psychologist who served on the APA task force and founder of the Intelligence Ethics Collection at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "This was not a politically adequate document. There are no specifics in it. We needed to at least say that we can't do waterboarding," Arrigo said.


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/07/26/interrogation/index.html

[soothsayer]

1. I wrote a paper on Nazi doctors once (they ended up helping

the Nazis figure out how to kill the most people with the smallest amount of ammo, etc.). It happens.

2. Yes, Nazi doctors also did

experiments on people in the concentration camps. I remember watching movies on that stuff in high school.