Saturday, March 26, 2011

Let Me Help You Stanch That Bloodflow With This Chainsaw

So Obama has selected the Bush Torturer-in Chief to serve on a White House task force on the psychological well-being of military families:
...Dr. Larry James. James, a retired Army colonel, was the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004.

Today, Dr. James circulated an excited email announcing, "with great pride," that he has now been selected to serve on the "White House Task Force entitled Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family." In his new position, he will be meeting at the White House with Michelle Obama and other White House officials on Tuesday...

James treated numerous detainees who were abused, degraded, and tortured, yet never took any steps to stop or even report these incidents. Last year, Steven Reisner -- senior faculty member and supervisor at the International Trauma Studies Program, who also teaches at New York University Medical School and Columbia University -- told Democracy Now: "there is a lot of evidence that has been made public showing that the torture programs in the CIA and at Guantánamo, the Department of Defense, were created and overseen by health professionals, particularly psychologists" and that psychologists were at these facilities "to use their professional expertise to break down the detainees."
He headed the BSCT program. The worst abuses continued under his watch. So of course it falls on the Democratic avatar of CHANGE to elevate him to a courtier of the inner sanctum. There aren't enough irony quotes in the whole world to contain the vomitus pouring out of this administration.