Is It Safe?

That was the famous line uttered repeatedly by Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) in Marathon Man, just before he tortures poor Thomas Levy (Dustin Hoffman) by drilling into his teeth. As proof that the longer you live, the more movie scenes you'll see come to life, this sort of abuse by doctors is now alleged as part of the procedure at Abu Ghraib:

LONDON - Doctors working for the U.S. military in Iraq collaborated with interrogators in the abuse of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, profoundly breaching medical ethics and human rights, a bioethicist charges in The Lancet medical journal.

He cites evidence that doctors or medics falsified death certificates to cover up homicides, hid evidence of beatings and revived a prisoner so he could be further tortured. No reports of abuses were initiated by medical personnel until the official investigation into Abu Ghraib began, he found.

"Revived a prisoner so he could be further tortured" should jump out at every American. This is what your country is doing in your name, and rather than this silly "he said/she said" over injuries suffered 35 years ago, THIS is what should be sprawled all over the front page. We kicked the shit out of Iraqis, then administered smelling salts so we could kick the shit out of them some more. Seymour Hersh is readying a book about Abu Ghraib and its roots in 9/11 that should be on shelves right after the convention. It remains to be seen if that will be as explosive a revelation as a bunch of well-funded Republican liars masquerading as truth-tellers.