Beyond "Those Pictures"

After the initial shock of those pictures we all shared at seeing those pictures from Abu Ghraib prison last week, I began thinking of the Stanford Prison experiment conducted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo. In this experiment, 24 young male volunteers were randomly assigned either the role of prisoner or guard.  After only a couple of days, the experiment spiralled out of control into a situation where the participants, including the experimenter, fell into their roles so completely that the place literally became a prison.  The guards became increasingly abusive and easily adopted the techniques of depersonalization and power manipulation.  Nothing in the pre-experiment screening indicated this behaviour, but the power of the roles they played and the context of the situation transformed them.

I think this is especially important to remember as you hear people condemn the behavior of the individuals involved.  Certainly, what I'm hearing is a focus on the indiviuals, rather than the systematic structure of what was going on within the prison in Iraq. These young men and women were thrust into a situation into which they were poorly prepared and in which they were instructed to "soften up" the prisoners by military intelligence "contractors."  The place operated in secrecy, with no access by lawyers, judges, the Red Cross, or any advocate for the prisoners. Can we be surprised when we see the results?

And the things they did do not appear to be random cruelty meted out by out-of-control guards.  I read an article from the October, 2003 issue of The Atlantic entitled "The Dark Art of Interrogation", which discussed interrogation, torture and "torture-lite".

Torture-lite is now a phrase I am hearing on CNN, but being used to differentiate this from what we are seeing in the recent images and descriptions of methods used.  Bull.  These images are quite consistent with torture-lite.  Hoods, restraints, forcing prisoners to remain in uncomfortable positions, sleep-deprivation, use of bright lights and restraints, nakedness, physical force. Anything to disorient and demoralize.

In addition, we're seeing the use of culturally-specific things such as the use of nudity in ways that specifically target the prisoners' religious and cultural attitudes to sex.  Nakedness in front of other men, much less in front of women is a dramatic affront.  These techniques are designed to break these men, to humiliate them, casue them to be confused and afraid. Reports of similar methods in use at Guantanamo have also surfaced, including the use of sexual methods of humiliation aimed at cultural and religious taboos.  That the new commander brought in to replace the disgraced commander is coming from Guantanamo should comfort no one.

This, to me, indicates that, in fact, these people were doing the jobs they'd been instructed to do.  We have in fact heard reports that potential whistle-blowers were told to go back, do their jobs and cooperate with the interrogators instructions. Reports of this treatment were leaking out last year, just not in the American press.

We are not seeing a few bad apples in action here.  We are seeing the tip of the iceberg of a systematic program of human-rights abuses being carried out as instructed. All prisons and detention centers in Iraq need to be opened to outside observers to ensure that this does not recur.  The facilities in Guantanamo need the same and the Supreme Court should take these revelations into consideration when making their ruling on the legitimacy of the detention center at Guantanamo.

Ultimately, the result of these revelations of abuse demonstrate the complete bankruptcy of the policies being enacted by the current administration.  The complete failure of the mission of "liberation" of Iraq seems more assured than ever and likely, the failure of the entire war on terrorism.