New low

In The Times, a headline about Iraq that’s hard to argue with: “Severed Heads Mark New Low.”

The NYT reports that the Pentagon will try to have only psychologists assist in the interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere rather than psychiatrists, because the American Psychiatric Association has higher ethical standards than the American Psychological Association. What the NYT misses is that the Pentagon’s new standards (pdf) also allow for the use of detainees’ medical files for “any lawful law enforcement, intelligence or national security-related activity,” i.e., interrogation. Also, they reaffirm the use of force-feeding on sane hunger-strikers.