Paging Dr. Mengele, Dr. Josef Mengele.

Truthout has a report taken from Department of Defense documents showing that detainees at Guantanamo were given massive doses of an anti-malarial drug which was known to have serious psychological side effects before they had even been tested for malaria, and in spite of the non-existence of malaria in Cuba:

“The Defense Department forced all “war on terror” detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial anti-malarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called “pharmacologic waterboarding.”

The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not.

All detainees arriving at Guantanamo in January 2002 were first given a treatment dosage of 1,250 mg of mefloquine, before laboratory tests were conducted to determine if they actually had the disease…The 1,250 mg dosage is what would be given if the detainees actually had malaria. That dosage is five times higher than the prophylactic dose given to individuals to prevent the disease.

The drug was administered to Guantanamo detainees without regard for their medical or psychological history, despite its considerable risk of exacerbating pre-existing conditions. Mefloquine is also known to have serious side effects among individuals under treatment for depression or other serious mental health disorders…In 2002, when the prison was established and mefloquine first administered, there were dozens of suicide attempts at Guantanamo. That same year, the DoD stopped reporting attempted suicides.”

But never mind all that, let’s look forward, not back. Speaking of looking forward:

“The Obama administration went to the mat to defend its predecessors from a torture prosecution in Spain last year, a leaked State Department cable shows.

The cable, released by WikiLeaks this week, shows that senior US diplomats teamed with Republican lawmakers — including a former Republican Party chairman — to put pressure on Spanish officials to drop a criminal investigation into the Bush administration’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Ain’t bi-partisanship great.