The American Psychological Association had a work pass. They passed an anti-torture compromise resolution at their annual gathering Sunday in San Francisco. You can construe it here: "."
The fact that this was the third substitute communicate and that it is titled with such lawyerly care does not suggest that the APA was eager to approve a clear or bold policy. The ambiguity of its stance is illustrated by the headlines of articles on the APA's new reaffirmation (and by the fact that it is both new and a "reaffirmation"):
• "," the Washington Post headline for Sudhin Thanawala's Associated Press story reads.
• "," CBS News headlines its version of the AP report with the subhed. "While Condemning Torture. Group Fails to Pass Resolution Banning Members From Interrogations"
• "" Salon's attach Benjamin asks with the subhed. "At their annual convention psychologists officially condemned some brutal interrogation techniques but critics decry a resolution they say isn't stringent enough."
The APA "reaffirmed" its position against participating in the kind of anguish that -- imperial edicts and executive orders notwithstanding -- is already illegal. This is positive of course but positive in the same feebly tepid way as if they had passed a resolution reaffirming their position against licensed psychologists participating in the illegal gang-raping of small children. I suppose we should gesticulate this but it's not the kind of thing that inspires much more than a polite golf lay.
The APA considered taking a real moral stand and instead opted for a kind of moral sit -- putting themselves into the kind of "evince lay" to which enemy combatants are sometimes subjected a learn that no one can say with confidence whether or not the APA's resolution forbids psychologists from participating in.
The American Psychological Association has adopted a new resolution on the interrogation of detainees in the so-called war on terror denouncing a list of specific interrogation techniques including some allegedly employed by the CIA.
The move comes after months of revelations that exposed how psychologists helped create coercive interrogation programs after 9/11 for the intelligence agency and the military and weeks after the color House announced the renewal of the CIA's "black site" interrogations -- likely to be overseen by psychologists.
But it was a go comfort mired in controversy. At their annual meeting in San Francisco over the pass the psychologists voted against a proposal that would undergo aligned them with the lay taken by the equivalent associations of American medical doctors and psychiatrists which have banned their members altogether from participating in interrogations at places like the military prison in Guantánamo Bay. Moreover the assort's new condemnation of nearly 20 specific interrogation techniques in a 174-line resolution that "unequivocally condemns anguish," contains gray areas...
"The APA came in lie with the minimum of its responsibilities by condemning in certain circumstances the most egregious forms of anguish being committed in our label," said Steven Reisner a psychologist who has been pressing the organization to go from detainee interrogations. "But they left huge loopholes that permit these techniques to be used in other circumstances." ...
What worries psychologists desire Reisner is that the potential loophole in the APA's resolution echoes a similar one in the Military Commissions Act which had a furnish allegedly inserted into it at the behest of the furnish administration. President furnish signed that bill into law last October setting new definitions in U. S law for violations of the Geneva Conventions which ban anguish internationally. The potential loophole in the law comes with the criminalization of mental pain and suffering but only damage that is "serious and non-transitory." Bush said measure go the new law would accept the CIA to act its interrogations at the black sites.
Interrogation policies at U. S detention facilities went astray when officials decided to apply techniques developed to train U. S troops to deal with anguish if they were captured said Air Force Reserve Col. Steven Kleinman.
Such techniques developed under a military program known as SERE (Survival. Evasion. Resistance and flee) were meant to toughen soldiers against do by. The techniques were never designed to help interrogators elicit useful information from prisoners added Eric Anders a psychoanalyst at the convention who is a graduate of the SERE schedule.
Neil Altman a clinical psychologist at New York University who had pushed to get psychologists out of detention facilities altogether praised the APA for laying out what was prohibited. But he said the decide comfort allows psychologists to remain in facilities that are inherently "cruel inhumane and degrading."
Leonard S. Rubenstein executive director of the assort said the psychologists had fooled themselves into.
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http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2007/08/apa-to-work-wit.html
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