Oscar-Tango | despardes.com

JAN 27: A doctor at the Israeli army used bodies of Palestinians killed by the Israeli occupation forces to give medics lessons in anatomy, Breaking the Silence organization reported after collecting new testimony from Israel Defense Forces soldiers on harsh actions carried out in the territories.

An IDF conscript, serving as a medic in the Ramallah district, told the Israeli news agency two years ago that the "lesson" had taken place following a clash between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli forces.

According to the Israeli soldier, the Palestinian's body was riddled with bullets shot by the Israeli army, causing some of his internal organs spill out of his body. The doctor then "took out a knife and began to cut off parts of the body," the soldier said.

"He explained the various parts to us - the membrane that covers the lungs, the layers of the skin, the liver, stuff like that," the soldier said. "I didn't say anything because I was still new in the army. Two of the medics moved away, and one of them threw up. It was all done very brutally. I saw other dead enemy bodies during my service. No other doctor did anything like that."

'Gitmo sex'
A detainee sits inside his cell in Camp Delta at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

JAN 27: A new report has emerged that female interrogators were used to try and break Muslim detainees held at the prison camp Guantanamo Bay. Methods used by the female interrogators included sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt with thong underwear and in one particular case smearing the face of a Saudi detainee with fake menstrual blood.

The information obtained comes from an insider's written account of what exactly was going on inside the Gitmo prison base. The draft account was obtained by a media source and is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review. The author of the manuscripts, former Army Sergeant Erik R. Saar worked as an Arabic translator at the Gitmo prison from December 2002 until June 2003.

According to Saar, three months after he arrived he began to notice the "disturbing" practices used by the interrogators.

Beginning in April 2003, "there hung a short skirt and thong underwear on the hook on the back of the door" of one interrogation team's office, he writes. "Later I learned that this outfit was used for interrogations by one of the female civilian contractors ... on a team which conducted interrogations in the middle of the night on Saudi men who were refusing to talk." This interrogation 'tactic' verifies testimonies of some released Guantanamo prisoners who said they were tormented by "prostitutes."

In another case, Saar describes a female military interrogator questioning an uncooperative 21-year-old Saudi detainee who allegedly had taken flying lessons in Arizona before the September 11 attacks.

"His female interrogator decided that she needed to turn up the heat," Saar writes, saying she repeatedly asked the detainee who had sent him to Arizona, telling him he could "cooperate" or "have no hope whatsoever of ever leaving this place or talking to a lawyer.'"

The female interrogator wanted to "break him," Saar says.
According to Saar, the interrogator left the room to ask a linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.

The Department of Defense has censored parts of his draft, mainly blacking out people's names, Saar said. He needed permission to publish because he signed a disclosure statement before going to Guantanamo.

Animal-human hybrids
JAN 27: Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras�a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.

But creating human-animal chimeras�named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail�has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?

There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.