Word: gitmo
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...Before this year, the feeding chair - marketed as a "padded cell on wheels" by its Iowa manfacturer - was evidently used sparingly. In comments several months ago, SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Bantz Craddock, who oversees Gitmo, joked that at least hunger strikers got to choose the color of their feeding tube (yellow was a favorite), and the flavor of the lozenges used to soothe thoats irritated by the feeding tubes. "Look, they get choices," Craddock said at the time. "And that's part of the problem." At the peak of a protest last fall, 131 protesters, or more than 25%, were...
...Officially, force-feeding at Gitmo is done with a tube 3mm. (or about .1 in.) across, the same size used in American hospitals. In a sworn statement last year, Gitmo's top physician at the time, Dr. John Edmondson, noted that"smaller tubes which remained in the patient for longer periods were more comfortable [and] easier to manage for medical personnel...
...this leads to another problem. According to al-Shehri's records and Gitmo doctors, a typical feeding lasts about two hours, with the inmate left in the restraint chair for roughly 45 minutes afterward. During the feeding period, the prisoner will receive as much as 1.5 liters of formula, which, in the case of hunger strikers, can be more than their stomachs can comfortably hold. This can produce what is euphemistically called "dumping syndrome," an uncomfortable, even painful bout of nausea, vomiting, bloating, diarrhea, and shortness of breath. And those are precisely the symptoms that al-Shehri and many other...
...World Medical Association, both of which condemn the force-feeding of prisoners as an assault on human dignity - so long as they're capable of making an informed decision not to eat. But that's the conundrum: How do you know what is an informed decision at Gitmo? Are detainees there, who are imprisoned in an isolated environment far from their families for an indefinite period, capable of making a rational and autonomous choice to starve themselves...
...code of ethics has been put to the test several times in the past, most notably during the 1980s, when several Irish Republican Army prisoners staged hunger strikes in British prisons. A handful died, and the episode was seen as evidence of Margaret Thatcher's toughness. At Gitmo, however, the death of a prisoner could ignite riots in the Muslim world. In that context, the Pentagon believes that keeping detainees alive at all costs is very much in the nation's security interest...