The Abu Ghraib Scandal You Don't Know - Time Magazine

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Some excerpts from a new Time Magazine Article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1025139,00.html

Parrson cited a dearth of catheters, correctly sized breathing tubes and orthopedic supplies, including casts used to treat bone fractures caused by shrapnel from high explosives. Items had to be reused with minimal sterilization or done without, he said. Glucose strips, used to measure blood sugar, were chronically in short supply, leading to haphazard insulin dosing for diabetics. On occasion, said Parrson, internists and he and other nonphysicians carried out amputations and other procedures usually performed by surgeons. "I took off an ankle and a lower leg," he recalls. "There was no one else, and if it was death or amputation, you just had to do it."

Among the most disturbed prisoners at Abu Ghraib was a man--probably psychotic, according to a medical staff member--who habitually coated his body in fecal matter and repeatedly tried to harm himself--for instance, by banging his head against cell walls. At one point, Auch says, medics asked his advice on restraining the prisoner, reporting that they had used a helmet to protect his head and improvised padded gloves and plastic handcuffs to secure his arms. The medics wanted to know whether using a tether would be appropriate, and Auch recalls that he gave his assent, saying, "The priority is to safeguard the prisoner." A military spokesman told TIME that U.S. military personnel in Iraq do employ tethers--sometimes loosely affixed around a leg or an arm--to restrain some detainees undergoing medical treatment.

Auch says neither he nor any members of his medical staff were consulted about an Iraqi, later dubbed "Ice Man," when he was first brought to the prison for interrogation by military intelligence. "They didn't check the detainee medically when he came in," says Auch. That may have been a mistake. The man expired under questioning in the middle of the night in an episode that has been officially ruled a homicide. According to statements made during an Army inquiry, military personnel ordered the body put on ice and then spirited it away after medics attached a fake IV to the dead man's arm in an apparent attempt to create the impression that he was still alive. Auch, who says he has not been questioned in the Army investigation, told TIME a medic confided in him that he was ordered by a military-intelligence officer to participate in the ruse and never to talk about it. The Pentagon refuses to comment while it continues to investigate the abuses.