TPM Reader PL:
You wrote, “A special place is reserved for the lawyers who give legal cover for such orders.”
What leaves me shaking my head, trying to understand, is not the lawyers, but the medical doctors who participate in torture and give guidance into how much more the person can take before they die. I just imagine the kind of person who decides to become a doctor — that person must want to heal, want to fix people, want to alleviate their suffering or pain or at least want to be someone who has the power to do that.
So this person has years of training, has seen people suffer and die and seen pain first hand — and yet, that same person is able to not only watch someone being tortured but take part in the process by saying the person could take 100 more volts or 4 more punches or 10 degrees cooler or stay in that position for another 24 hours before their legs break or whatever. I wonder at what point they lose that humanity. I wonder what they think of themselves when they look in the mirror or what goes through their mind when they turn off the light and pull the blanket up to their chin to go to sleep. When their family asks about their day, what do they tell their kids they do? I wonder what they tell themselves to make it be OK.
I simply cannot imagine the gentle hands of a doctor who in one case may be so delicately examining a wound to then be the one to say “Yeah, this guy can take more… he’s still conscious so go at it.”
Late update: Some readers have questioned whether there is any evidence of doctors having actually participated in the Administration-sanctioned torture. There is evidence, much of it circumstantial, that military health care providers, including physicians, have been complicit in torture. You can find more here and here.
