Comments on: When Dr. Torture Comes Marching Home Again

By: MarilynSanAntone

MarilynSanAntone — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:08:35 +0000

I am a day late to this post because my husband was in hospital for four days having carotid artery surgery with a bad reaction to anasthesia. He was sedated for 24 hours and on a ventilator. Luckily he improved and was discharged Saturday. Were any of his MDs former torturors? There was the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the internist, the pulmonologist etc etc. Some were young enough to have been military. I wish I had read this post earlier. Some years ago, a doctor wrote a book about the crime of medical professionals participating and enabling torture at Abu Gharib…can’t recall his name or book title. But this has been a concern of the medical profession (read good doctors) for some time now. Kirk, your article poses a new scary uncertainty about our immediate future. I will surely ask your question of every MD I encounter in the future. Thank you for this uncomfortable and stirring post. This is the reason I read and occasionally participate at FDL.

By: elmoticky

elmoticky — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:38:39 +0000

It is really frustrating to be living under the Bush Reich
and the Cheney Junta. The power to tell Santiago to say that
the detainee died in his sleep is the horror that these
criminals brought to the table.

By: perris

perris — Sun, 04 May 2008 10:36:41 +0000

How would you feel about a torture doc caring for your family?

so how would we know?

By: newspaperbrat

newspaperbrat — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:57:56 +0000

Bravo & wholehearted thanks dear Kirk for this important post and most memorable discussion! Thank you too intrepid firepups for your thoughtful comments.

By: prostratedragon

prostratedragon — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:45:23 +0000

Other places, too. To become accustomed to the idea, without having to invoke the actual Nazis:

Death and the Maiden
The Official Story

(To the webmasters: I was just locked out of here for about 45min, a thing that happens frequently of late. The usual pattern includes failure of one of the blogs at firedoglake.com, while the others remain available, and surfing at my end also remains undisturbed. Ciao.)

By: nahant

nahant — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:20:42 +0000

Kirk great post! The subject of torture is something I never thought would be about Americans performing it. We as a country need to realize that the rest of the world has lost all respect for us1 We will never live this down unless these war criminials are brought to justice by our justice system and not left up to the international courts to met out the justice that cries out to be administrated to these abhorrent officials!
Nancy needs to be included in the gang for no=t allowing the Impeachment hearing to begin. Only when that happens will the real truth and depth of the travesties that have besmirch the good name of the United States!
Thank again for this post which brings home to all the depth of these criminials!

By: DWBartoo

DWBartoo — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:15:17 +0000

As always, Kirk, thank you for daring to raise the questions that discomfit the soul.

By: newtonusr

newtonusr — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:14:14 +0000

Well, yeah.
But since the author isn’t in law enforcement, but is instead, an M.D….

By: 12Quarts

12Quarts — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:12:24 +0000

Limiting your comments to doctors is not even approaching the real problem. The men that are performing the actual torture will come back and join the local police force. Think “third degree” interrogations won’t be far behind?

By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D.

Kirk James Murphy, M.D. — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:11:44 +0000

Prairie, thanks to you and all the good folk here at the Lake and elsewhere who remember that our nation - despite our flawed past and present - has the capacity and integrity to rise above torture and war crimes.

As the Bushies’ Iraq disaster accelerates us past the end of a century of Imperial ambitions, we in this century have the real opportunity to return our nation to the values we knew before our military started killing the Filipinos we “liberated” from Spain…almost a century ago.

And we’ll have Mark Twain to show the way!

Back then, at the birth of the American Empire, Samuel Clemens (’Mark Twain’) risked his reputation, his career, and his fortune taking an uncompromising public stand against the war in the Philippines. No pacifist, Twain nevertheless refused to allow jingoists, imperialists, and flag-wavers to define America’s proper role in the world. ‘I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land,’ he wrote.

Twain’s anti-war essays had never been collected in one place before this book, and many of the writings here were never published at all. Twain takes the reader’s breath away with his bold and uncompromising resistance to empire. ‘The War Prayer’ (1905) should be required reading in Congress and on talk radio, while ‘Roosevelt, the American Gentleman’ (1906) should be engraved on TR’s tombstone.

And then there’s ‘patriotism.’ In ‘Monarchical and Republican Patriotism’ (1908), Twain defines the former as the government telling the people what is and is not ‘respectable’ patriotism. ‘In the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be.’

He continues: ‘We have adopted [monarchical patriotism] with all its servility, with an unimportant change in wording: “Our country, right or wrong!” We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had: the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he (just *he*, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.’

Excellent company - as are y’all. Thanks for joining together at the Lake tonight.

Now I’m off to dine with loved ones.

Good night, pups.