Abu Ghraib: Ordinary Folk or Human Aberrations?

[0rion]

Linda S. Heard, Arab News —

CAIRO, 24 August 2004 — “Everything, everything in war is barbaric... but the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being,” wrote the late Swedish author Ellen Kay.

If one goes along with the defense of “we were simply following orders” put forward by the American military at Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison, while images of them celebrating pyramids of their naked, bruised, beaten and humiliated handiwork with grins and thumbs-up, she may have a point.

Abu Ghraib: Ordinary Folk or Human Aberrations?

[Maple]

1. Ordinary folk, sadly

[mongo]

2. The Milgram Experiment

What will happen when the "faithful" are asked to turn against their neighbors?

The people administering what they believed were extremely painful doses of electricity...went on doing it. Afterward most could not believe they were capable of such behavior. Some said: “Well...I was only carrying out instructions”.

[Eric J in MN]

3. There was a policy from Rumsfeld to humiliate prisoners.

From "The Gray Zone" by Seymour Hersh:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact

(Major General Geoffrey) Miller’s concept, as it emerged in recent Senate hearings, was to “Gitmoize” the prison system in Iraq—to make it more focussed on interrogation. He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba—methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in “stress positions” for agonizing lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)

(Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and (intelligence officer Stephen) Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.