"Torturing" The Wounded.

From the LA Times:

Degrading treatment and psychological manipulation cause as much emotional suffering and long-term mental damage as physical torture, researchers reported Monday.

Psychiatric evaluations of 279 victims of torture and other abuses from the Balkan wars of the 1990s showed that both types of ill treatment led to similarly high rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The victims themselves rated the psychological tactics on par with the physical abuses they suffered.

The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, grew out of questions about how the Bush administration has interpreted international and U.S. laws as they relate to interrogation of suspected terrorists.

The administration has sought to narrow the definition of torture to only the most extreme forms of physical abuse and psychological tactics resulting in severe, long-term harm. It has argued that some measures — banned under international law as cruel, degrading and inhuman — are acceptable.

What's interesting here is that certain "acceptable measures" were changed to "unacceptable"...after bad news came out.

In the wake of scandals at U.S. detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the military rewrote its field manual.

Several interrogation techniques were explicitly banned, including placing sacks over the heads of prisoners, intimidating detainees with military dogs and withholding food and medical care, said Army Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a spokesman for the Defense Department.

So what about conditions like this?

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

Basically, the conditions of our soldier's hospitals seem to be on par with the detention centers. The only difference is that one place does what it does on purpose, the other out of neglect.