Medical Experimentation on Detainees?

On Sunday, the NYT reported that Physicians for Human Rights alleges that the CIA not only tortured detainees but also conducted medical experiments on them. Now, thankfully, the alleged experiments come nowhere near the horrific crimes committed by Dr. Mengele in WWII. But, there were still criminally distasteful. CIA doctors attempted to "calibrate the level of pain experienced by detainees during interrogation, ostensibly to keep it from crossing the administration's legal threshold of what it claimed constituted torture." Recall that the Bushies defined that partially as pain commensurate with "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Not exactly a humane standard.

The CIA is, of course, denying the report. Given the CIA's long track record of dubious denials, I'm not taking that at face value.

Regardless, this comes on the heels of W. defiantly admitting that we did indeed waterboard (i.e., torture) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and that he'd "do it again to save lives." We spent so much of 2001-2008 outraged at what was being done in our name that it almost seems hard to muster it up again. But, I hope that this report revives talk of investigating the Bush administration's gross abuses of power.