What can social psychology teach us about what happened at Abu Ghraib? By Mandy Stead During the Iraq war that between 2003 and 2006, the united states army committed a series of human rights violations against prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Bagdad. The violations included murder, sexual and physical abuse, rape, torturer, sodomy, humiliating and dehumanizing prisoners. In 2004 the abuse that was carried out was exposed by the publication of images that were taken by the soldiers that carried out the violations. This paper will be looking at what social psychology can teach us about what happened at Abu Ghraib. The abuse took place in tier 1A on the night shift. The soldiers involved were all reserve soldiers who were not prepared or trained for this mission. They were asked to interrogate the detainees ‘take the gloves off’ to extract information out of them. The soldiers were pressured into crossing the line to gain information by the centre intelligence agency, tier 1A was known as the interrogation hold. One detained was mentally ill, he covered himself in faeces every day, the soldiers would have to role him in sand so he wouldn’t smell so bad and they named him ‘Shitboy’. What was he doing in an interrogation hold? This is one example that shows the level of humiliation and dehumanisation that went on. Philip Zimbardo was an expert witness for U.S. Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Frederick, who was convicted of five charges of abusing prisoners, including
In the movie, “A Few Good Men”, two types of reactions are shown in response to being part of a person’s wrongful death. Philip Zimbardo in his work, “The Stanford Prison Experiment”, provides the perspective of the guards who initiated a harsh prison environment and how they reflected upon the experience. Meanwhile a real-life scandal is analyzed by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak in “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism”. This piece reviews the actions of soldiers in controversial situations shortly after the infamous 9-11 attacks. Repeating the military topic, Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton addressed Lt. Calley’s steadfast belief that he did no wrong in the Vietnam War scandal in “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of
In the article, “The Torture Myth,” Anne Applebaum explores the controversial topic of torture practices, focused primarily in The United States. The article was published on January 12, 2005, inspired by the dramatic increase of tensions between terrorist organizations and The United States. Applebaum explores three equality titillating concepts within the article. Applebaum's questions the actual effectiveness of using torture as a means of obtaining valuable information in urgent times. Applebaum explores the ways in which she feels that the United States’ torture policy ultimately produces negative effects upon the country. Applebaum's final question is if torture is not optimally successful, why so much of society believes it
In “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism,” Marianne Szegedy-Maszak informs the reader of the situation United States guards caused against Iraqi detainees. Under Bush’s presidency, United States soldiers brought physical abuse and humiliation upon the Abu Ghraib Prison. Szegedy-Maszak briefly analyzes the situation and compares the abuse to further scientific experiments in which test obedience. One of the experiments was the topic of another article titled, “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” written by Philip G. Zimbardo. In his work, Zimbardo discusses the experiment he held at Stanford University. A group of male students from the university were paid to participate in an experiment held in a mock prison. Half of the group
8. In 2003 U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Ghraib, 20 miles west of Baghdad. The prisoners were stripped, made to wear bags over their heads, and sexually humiliated while the guards laughed and took photographs. How is this abuse similar to or different from what took place in the Stanford Prison Experiment?
The organization of the essay is impressive. The introduction is effective in grasping the audiences’ attention. Mae begins the essay by giving information about the topic. She states that “[i]n 2004, when the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib became known, many Americans became concerned that the government was using torture as part of its interrogation of war-on-terror detainees.” This quote makes readers want to read further into the essay, and it also shows how the topic of essay is
citizens, but it was the researchers afterwards that contributed the most startling idea. Zimbardo, the same man who ran the Stanford Prison Experiment, said in an interview with the New York Times, “Prisons tend to be brutal and abusive places unless great effort is made to control the guards’ base impulses. It’s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches” (Swhwartz, 2004 p. 2). A professor of Law at Loyola University, Marcy Strauss, studies criminal procedure and wrote a forty-two page manuscript on the lessons that should be discussed beyond news articles. Strauss said of Abu Ghraib, “Undoubtedly, these factors [poor training of guards, poor oversight and horrendous conditions] played a major role in facilitating the abuse. Correcting these conditions is imperative. But, to end the introspection there would be a mistake” (Strauss, 2005 p.9). The idea that people could be malignant under specific circumstances has been proven by Milgrams’ studies and this idea is now apparent in real life. Thus, the concern for prisons, as pointed out by both Zimbardo and Strauss, cannot simply be that the guards or correctional officers do not abuse people in the future. The issue is that the maltreatment and indignity in Abu Ghraib was a result of the poor foundation of the U.S. correctional system (Strauss,
In “The Torture Myth”, the author, Anne Applebaum successfully uses logos by including quotes from various sources to support her main claim. Her main claim is the following: “Perhaps it's reassuring to tell ourselves tales about the new forms of "toughness" we need, or to talk about the special rules we will create to defeat this special enemy. Unfortunately, that toughness is self-deceptive and self-destructive. Ultimately it will be self-defeating as well.”(Applebaum) Throughout the piece, she provides several expert testimonies to enforce her claim. The situation of this writing is to clarify what society thinks the effectiveness of torture is compared to the reality. The target audience of this piece is educated people that read the Washington Post, but more specifically law enforcement personnel and or agencies that can possibly use this information in the field. The purpose of this article is to inform society about the misconceptions regarding torture. Although people think that torture is an effective method, because of Applebaum's successful use of logos, diction, and repetition, it is understood that torture is ultimately self-defeating and self-destructive.
In this paper I will illustrate how the lessons learned from the Stanford Experiment apply to understanding the dynamics of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The Stanford Experiment demonstrates how social influence can persuade one’s behavior and shape their conformity. The experiment and the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib exemplify the power of authority by utilizing their positions and uniforms to control and overrule the prisoners.
The Abu Ghraib torture scandal left a large blemish on the occupation of Iraq and George Bush’s War on terror. As stories of the torture happening in the Abu Ghraib prison began circulating, American citizens had trouble comprehending the acts of evil their soldiers had committed on Iraqis. Some began to see a correlation between Abu Ghraib and the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Though the guards in both situations were brutal to their captives, distinct differences lay in the severity of their actions. Abu Ghraib’s guards were much more vicious to their captives, and this can be attributed to the prejudices the guards felt against their captors, the environment, and the lack of training, compounded with a lack of accountability in the leadership.
She begins recounting the notorious details, how innocent college students labeled prisoners and guards displayed psychological abuse after only six days of confinement, and makes reference to Stanley Milgram’s obedience study and Abu Ghraib, where similar maltreatment, perceived or real, was conducted on civilians by civilians. She addresses and refutes the accepted belief that the Stanford Prison Experiment proved that anyone could become a tyrant when given or instructed by a source of authority. Instead, she suggests that Zimbardo’s inquiry points toward but does not land on one exact conclusion. She explains the influence of the setting, the presentation of the roles, Zimbardo’s participation, and perhaps a sense of expectation felt, all of which can be reflected in the shocking behavior of a few guards. She argues that it should not have been so shocking. Konnikova discredits the neutrality of Zimbardo’s experiment by insisting that people who would respond to an ad for a psychological study of prison life were not “normal” people. However, with her diction and choice of evidence she displaces the study's culpability in a way that ultimately blurs and undermines her claim.
The subsequent case study, prepared by James P. Pfiffner, Torture and Public Policy, (2010) analyzes the torture and abuse of war prisoners by United States military personnel in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following photographs of the abuse spread around the world in the fall of 2003. Pfiffner points out that the United States Military, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfield, and President George W. Bush assumed a role in the events leading up to the exploitation, even though it has never been corroborated that President Bush or Secretary of State Rumsfield directly condoned the abuse.
The United States citizens have been wrestling with the question of, whether their government intelligence agencies should be prohibited from using torture to gather information. According to Michael Ignatieff, this is the hardest case of what he describes as ‘lesser evil ethics’—a political ethics predicated on the idea that in emergencies leaders must choose between different evils Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, torture was viewed by most American’s as only actions that brutal dictators would employ on their citizens, to keep order within their country. However, this all changed when in May 2004, The New Yorker released photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The disturbing pictures were released on the internet showing bodies of naked Iraqis piled onto each other, others showed Iraqis being tortured and humiliated. There was a huge up roar, which caused the President at the time George W. Bush to publicly apologize, and threaten the job of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Soon after, the CIA Conformed the use of waterboarding on three Al-Qaida suspects in 2002 and 2003, which further annihilated the topic. Since these reports, torture has been in the forefront of national politics, and the public opinion has been struggling to commit on whether torture is right or wrong.
The author, Melissa Mae, explains the issue, along with the opposing sides, clearly. Mae begins the essay by introducing the issue. She says the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib gained attention around 2004. Americans became concerned when they found out the government was using torture and were extremely upset about it. She states that people believed torture was being used as a part of the government’s “interrogation of war-on-terror detainees.” Though she tells the readers what the issue is, she never fully explains it. She only tells us that the essays she wrote about were written around the time the debate was heating up. A positive trait about this essay is that she stated the issue in the first paragraph.
They came for him at midnight. While in Pakistan, Abdule Salam Zaeef was arrested by Pakistani government officials and taken away from his wife and children, whom he was not able to see for approximately five years. Zaeef was a known member of the Taliban, but he had no leadership responsibilities, and had not taken part in any terrorist activity, having joined only for religious reasons. He was taken illegally with no evidence to support his arrest, and was handed over to the custody of the United States. After being transferred several times and enduring abuse and humiliation at the hands of his captors, he finally ending up in Guantanamo Bay. There he was held without trial, prosecution, or evidence for four years (Zaeef 1-25). These