Amanda Taub:
It doesn’t matter if torture worked. It’s still wrong.
Don't miss
Atul Gawande's take on this from a physician's perspective. Which I totally endorse.
Dan Diamond:
Doctors fail.
They leave devices in patients; they prescribe the wrong drugs; they even operate on the wrong limbs.
And Atul Gawande knows this. He understands it. The renowned surgeon has written powerfully, sensitively on human error in medicine and ways to fix it.
But Gawande can’t abide when doctors morally fail.
In a series of furious tweets on Wednesday, the New Yorker writer castigated clinicians for their role in helping the CIA carry out torture — and in some cases, effectively doing it themselves.
NBC:
One of two psychologists whose firm was paid $81 million to design the CIA's interrogation techniques for terror suspects is blasting a Senate report that criticized the program's brutality and effectiveness.
"I always sleep comfortably at night," James Mitchell told NBC News on Wednesday.
"I think the American people ought to know the men and women of the CIA and the armed services have given up their lives and their security to protect them. It's not always pretty," he added. "I wish this report had come out in a bipartisan way."
In an earlier interview with the Associated Press, Mitchell said Senate report's accusation that he and his partner did not have experience as interrogators or an understanding of Al Qaeda is "flat wrong." He said he understood the shocked reaction to the report's claims. "I would be upset by it too, if it were true," he said.
@blakehounshell He is, of course, referring to rectal feeding (it’s right there in the report.)
— @DemFromCT
psychopath RT @taylormarsh: "...one way you can get nourishment into a person is through this procedure.." - Michael Hayden on @CNN
— @digby56
I might read what Cheney had to say if he were saying it from prison.
— @xpostfactoid1
:
The publication today of a censored summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the use of torture at C.I.A. prisons has brought war-crime apologists out from under their rocks.
Chief among them is former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the all-time great prisoner abuse enthusiasts. Even before the report was issued, Mr. Cheney was telling The New York Times on Monday that torturing prisoners was absolutely the right thing to do and that everything the C.I.A. did was authorized.
Brett LoGiurato:
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of an at-times gruesome report detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s controversial policies exposed a still-lingering divide within the Republican Party over the legacy of President George W. Bush — particularly in the foreign-policy realm.
The divisions, seven years after Bush left office, are likely to continue and play out in public as numerous Republicans consider mounting a presidential run in 2016.
“There’s a fundamental divide over foreign policy in the Republican camp. It’s much deeper than just the Bush legacy,” said Ian Bremmer, the president of the risk-consulting firm Eurasia Group.
Quinnipiac:
New Jersey voters give Gov. Christopher Christie a mixed job approval rating, as 48 percent approve and 47 percent disapprove. This compares to a 46 - 45 percent approval rating October 1 and continues an 11-month slump which began when the Bridgegate scandal broke.
Approval is 82 - 12 percent among Republicans and 51 - 45 percent among independent voters, while Democrats disapprove 74 - 20 percent.
The governor gets negative grades for handling key issues:
41 - 51 percent for handling the economy and jobs;
42 - 48 percent for handling the state budget;
39 - 50 percent for handling education.
"Gov. Christie's job approval numbers continue on the tepid track that started with the Bridgegate story, a dramatic contrast with the heady 2013 days when he was swooping to re- election," Carroll said.
Brian Palmer:
How can you tell whether a doctor has screwed up? You use other doctors as a measuring stick. That’s why our tort law defines medical malpractice as an act that “deviates from accepted norms of practice in the medical community.” Now the New York State Legislature wants to substitute its own judgment for that of medical scientists. If it succeeds, rogue doctors will be able to shill their non-evidence-based treatments without worrying about intervention.
In May and June, the two houses of the New York State Legislature unanimously passed a bill prohibiting the state’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct—the agency that disciplines doctors who put their patients in danger—from so much as investigating a claim of medical misconduct that is “based solely on treatment that is not universally accepted by the medical profession.” The bill’s wording is strange—after all, very few practices are “universally accepted” in medicine. And why would the state want to protect practitioners who use unaccepted treatments? Drill down into the text and you’ll see that this is yet another attempt to promote acceptance of chronic Lyme disease.
