Further Abu Ghraib revelations

[A]s it turns out, a few weeks before the photo was taken [of Lynndie England and the Iraqi prisoner], use of a leash was approved on medical grounds, according to the Army doctor who commanded the medical unit that cared for Abu Ghraib's prisoners and the American soldiers who guarded them.

[...]

Maj. David Auch, told us that some of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were psychotic and out of control. One, he said, would repeatedly strip off his clothes and smash his head against the wall. After handcuffs and a helmet failed to stop him and with straitjackets unavailable, some soldiers suggested the leash. Major Auch granted their request. "My concern was whatever it took to keep him from getting hurt," he said.

It is easy to criticize Major Auch for allowing M.P.'s to use a leash, but it is difficult to say what he should have done instead. He had antipsychotic drugs on hand but no psychiatrists to prescribe them, and he lacked the experience to give these powerful drugs himself.

[...]

We don't condone this practice, and there can be no excuse for the torture and other abuse that many detainees endured at Abu Ghraib. But we are not inclined to blame Major Auch. The men and women who risked their lives to care for Iraqis and Americans alike were put in impossible circumstances by indifference or worse from above.

[...]

Up to 5 percent of the detainee population (which averaged 2,000 in late 2003 and early 2004) was mentally ill, Lieutenant Wehrman told us, but to his knowledge, none of the prisoners received medication.

The atmosphere at Abu Ghraib hardly promoted sanity. Mortar shells landed almost daily, according to military personnel we interviewed, and prisoners often rioted, sometimes using smuggled weapons, with deadly effect.

[...]

At times the hospital lacked basic supplies, according to members of the clinical staff, and at times it maintained a surgical service without surgeons. Sometimes the hospital ran out of chest tubes, intravenous fluids or medicines. Medical staff members improvised, taking tubes from patients when they died and reusing them, without sterilization.

Physician's assistants and general practitioners amputated limbs, a dentist did heart surgery, and Major Auch begged and bartered with other medical units for drugs and intravenous fluids. When they ran out of blood sugar test strips for Abu Ghraib's many diabetics, according to a medic assigned to the unit, they gave insulin by guessing the dose and watching for bad reactions.
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Could I stop here for a moment, please? The army doctor couldn't prescribe anti-psychotics, but the dentist could perform heart surgery?

Major Auch's men received sophisticated equipment like digital X-ray machines, several said, but they weren't taught how to use it. And in fact, a psychiatrist was assigned to Abu Ghraib for a few months. But he treated no patients; that wasn't his job. He was supposed to help military intelligence make interrogation plans.