Torture, health professionals, and the Obama Administration: Where we go from here?

Knowledge of the extent of torture committed by the CIA and US military deepened in 2009. Legal memoranda released by the Justice Department authorized waterboarding and other forms of torture and relied on the approval and presence of medical personnel to justify their use. A report of the Senate Armed Services Committee provides a detailed account of the employment of interrogation methods derived from the program designed to train military personnel to resist torture and the extensive role physicians and psychologists played in developing and implementing them. And a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross showed in brutal details how these methods were put into practice and with what impact. This session will review what these disclosures tell us and discuss questions confronting the nation about the prospect of an independent commission to investigate the regime of torture and the prospects for accountability.