ABOUT THIS BOOK
“If law be the bedrock of civil society, it can
no more undergird torture than it could support
slavery or genocide.”
–from the Introduction
The graphic photographs of U.S. military personnel
grinning over abused Arab and Muslim prisoners
shocked the world community. That the United States
was systematically torturing inmates at prisons run
by its military and civilian leaders divided the
nation and brought deep shame to many. When Steven
H. Miles, an expert in medical ethics and an
advocate for human rights, learned of the neglect,
mistreatment, and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib,
Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere, one of his first
thoughts was: “Where were the prison doctors while
the abuses were taking place?”
In Oath Betrayed, Miles explains the answer
to this question. Not only were doctors, nurses, and
medics silent while prisoners were abused;
physicians and psychologists provided information
that helped determine how much and what kind of
mistreatment could be delivered to detainees during
interrogation. Additionally, these harsh
examinations were monitored by health professionals
operating under the purview of the U.S. military.
Miles has based this book on meticulous research and
a wealth of resources, including unprecedented
eyewitness accounts from actual victims of prison
abuse, and more than thirty-five thousand pages of
documentation acquired through provisions of the
Freedom of Information Act: army criminal
investigations, FBI notes on debriefings of
prisoners, autopsy reports, and prisoners’ medical
records. These documents tell a story markedly
different from the official version of the truth,
revealing involvement at every level of government,
from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the
Pentagon’s senior health officials to prison
health-care personnel.
Oath Betrayed is not a denunciation of
American military policy or of war in general, but
of a profound betrayal of traditions that have
shaped the medical corps of the United States armed
forces and of America’s abdication of its leadership
role in international human rights. This book is a
vital document that will both open minds and
reinvigorate Americans’ understanding of why human
rights matter, so that we can reaffirm and fortify
the rules for international civil society.
“This, quite simply, is the most devastating and
detailed investigation into a question that has
remained a no-no in the current debate on American
torture in George Bush’s war on terror: the role of
military physicians, nurses, and other medical
personnel. Dr. Miles writes in a white rage, with
great justification–but he lets the facts tell the
story.”
–Seymour M. Hersh, author of Chain of Command
“Steven Miles has written exactly the book we
require on medical complicity in torture. His
admirable combination of scholarship and moral
passion does great service to the medical profession
and to our country.”
–Robert Jay Lifton, M.D., author of The Nazi
Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology
of Genocide, and co-editor of Crimes of War:
Iraq