While condemning critics as "opportunistic commentators", President
Koocher touts, rather, the Task Force on Psychological Ethics and
National Security (PENS), in which a hand-picked membership, including
six
(out of nine) voting members from the military and intelligence
establishment, were carefully guided by the APA leadership to the
predetermined
conclusion
that psychologist participation in interrogations at Guantanamo and the
numerous other U.S. detention facilities around the world was ethically
permissible, indeed, President Koocher gives the sense, even admirable.
While condemning "torture" in the abstract, the APA has systematically
refused to deal with the reality of what occurs at Guantanamo, Abu
Ghraib,
Bagram Air Base (see also
Papers reveal Bagram abuse),
or any of the numerous other places around the world where tens of
thousands are detained by American forces and abused, with no rights,
legal protections, or sense of when, or if, they will ever be released.
Thus, through this subterfuge, psychology has become one of those
professions accepting the deliberate infliction of human suffering and
the systematic destruction of human beings. If the APA policy allowing
participation in interrogations is not reversed soon, the phrase
"American psychologist" will start being uttered in sentences that also
include phrases like "Soviet psychiatrists" or "Nazi doctors"
As occurred in response to Soviet psychiatry, which contributed to the
maintenance of "state security" by locking up dissidents in mental
hospitals, perhaps it is time for psychological and other professional
associations around the world to cease collaborating with the
torture-accepting American Psychological Association.
Writings 
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