https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/what-lessons-torture-bases-nhs-reform

US General Stanley McChrystal has been invited to advise on creating a ‘team of teams’ for healthcare transformation. His credentials? He previously ran interrogation bases where Iraqis were stripped naked and beaten, reports SOLOMON HUGHES

HEALTH SECRETARY Wes Streeting adopted Labour’s “warfare over welfare” approach by inviting US General Stan McChrystal, a key player in the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to give advice on NHS “reform.”

Papers I recently obtained under Freedom of Information show Streeting sought out McChrystal for the meeting, which took place last November. Streeting’s office wrote to the Ministry of Defence saying he “would like a contact for General Stanley McChrystal as he’d be interested in hearing more about his experience in mobilising change” to “inform” his “10 Year Plan for Health.” With Ministry of Defence help, Streeting invited McChrystal to London.

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McChrystal led JSOC from 2003–8, battling the al-Qaida insurgency in Iraq, which followed the British-US invasion. McChrystal is credited with success through the 2006 killing of al-Qaida’s Iraqi leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. However, defeating al-Qaida only led to the rise of the more vicious group Isis.

Human Rights Watch and the Washington Post detailed abuses by troops under McChrystal’s command in Iraq in this conflict. JSOC ran an interrogation base, Camp Nama, where Human Rights Watch says detainees were “beaten” and “regularly stripped naked, subjected to sleep deprivation and extreme cold, placed in painful stress positions.” Maybe Streeting thinks McChrystal being in charge of physical abuses gives him some kind of medical knowledge.

It’s certainly hard to see how Streeting can believe McChrystal is somehow a model for good and lasting change. McChrystal’s Afghanistan success was also short-lived: the Taliban is back in charge of Kabul.

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