Bullcookies prof. Those soldiers did have oversight. They were ordered to torture. They were not 'bad apples' they were following unlawful orders.

This guy is just trying to profit and bask in the limelight.

The most interesting study in this phenomenon was the one done to monkeys. They were shocked if they refused to press a button that would shock another monkey in a separate room.

A similar experiment was done with humans(of course the shock effect was faked).

They found that a human would be willing to shock another human just by having an authority figure asking them to.

But guess what? :)
The monkeys would rather be shocked than do it to another monkey.
Human moral inferiority demonstrated once again, thanks to the sadism of human supremacist scientists.

The first returning troops from Getmo spoke of torture 'lite' so it's clear that inhuman violations of the Geneva conventions were always intended. It's no wonder that so many of our young people kill themselves after they understand the sins they commited for Bush/Cheney and our corporate government.
I understand that the American Army's view of the atrocity pictured in this article is considered just Standard Operating Proceedure. The Corporate Warrior Class will be the death of civilization.

Currently, those who served in these prisons are also suffering their own PTSD ---
If you do harm to others, you will eventually suffer for it.

Actually,

The APA has been entrenched for over 50 years with covert operations and is part of Naomi Klien's Shock Doctrine paradigm. So, i really wouldn't give Zimbardo that much credence.

Quite frankly, i don't believe that environment is more powerful than character, and personal stregth mind and heart, or else there would be no whistleblowers or 'heroes' at all. And one short-lived Zimbardo experiment does not imply any sort of paradigm for goodness sake!

Yes, the Milgram study is far more relevant, i agree. But this is all about people giving over their moral authority to those in charge. Sounds like what happens to people who are raised in religions where they are taught that they should not trust themselves, and obey those who have more authority (closer to God), than they are. In other words, don't think or feel for yourself.

What we are learning is that this foundation leads to people giving up their own personal responsibility for their behaviour. And let's not forget, that those who are chosen to work in torture situations are being selected based upon traits such as sadistic tendencies. They are also people who chose to join the military in the first place, so are willing to kill strangers for an ideology.

'Onward Christian soldier' and all that.

French---Cheese eating surrender monkeys
Americans---Macca munching mass murderers

"A similar experiment was done with humans(of course the
They found that a human would be willing to shock another human just by having an authority figure asking them to.

But guess what?
The monkeys would rather be shocked than do it to another monkey."

Kelmer:

I knew about the human experiment but not about the experiment done on monkeys. Would you mind providing a reference? I'd be very interested.

Thanks.

Ever notice how the people who complain the loudest about any one thing are those who are guilty of that very thing themselves?

George tried to convince us that everyone except himself, Cheney, and Rice were evil. Alarms went off in my head as soon as the "If you're not for us you're against us" doctrine was declared.

Other administrations may have been equally guilty but none but this one has been so proud of his own evil. You would almost think he cannot tell right from wrong.

I am reading Zimbardo's book right now. He is a little self-important, not the best writer I have come across, and I am sure he wants to make some money from his book, but that does not mean he is wrong. And, his work at Stanford was an extension of Milgram's, not a replacement of it. You don't have to choose one over the other. In fact, I think one should read Milgram's work, too. And the monkey thing is interesting, so why not read that too?

The frightening thing about his book is just how quickly the "guards" became abusive. It only took a few hours for them to be yelling, demanding pushups, and locking "prisoners" into the "Hole" (a broom closet) for perceived lack of cooperation (not "sounding off" their numbers as demanded). It is very spooky, they all seem so ordinary, but just assigning them these roles seems to bring out a real "evil".

Really folks, read the book before you jump to your conclusions. And I think Dr. Z probably knows more about the Gitmo/Abu Griab situation than most of us. He WAS called as an expert witness in a trial concerning one of the guards, and was allowed access to a lot of information.

Read it. Read it. Read it. Or shut up about what you think it says.

This is really old news, that most never read or heard about, because they are not part of the psych. research crowd.

The real definitive experiment was called off after 6-days, as those split into the role of police/prison guards naturally took advantage of their position and became meaner and more hostile and demeaning everyday, toward the "prisoners".

The split of people into these two categories, and then allowing them to naturally follow their inclinations, is one of the most profound psychological study ever completed.

The original experimenters were actually accused of un-ethical behavior, and causing unbelievable suffering and pain on the part of the "prisoner" group, but how could they have know?

Now days, it IS illegal to conduct such an experiment on subjects, in psychology circles and academia - but that hardly applies to neo-con purposes of torturing people to generate terror.

I cannot recall the name of the study, but in was done about 40 years ago, at a major university.

¿ Anyone remember ?

Namaste

… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK

I notice that Zimbardo's definition of hero is the same as mine. The moral courage to speak out against the majority when an abuse, an injustice, a crime is committed. Very few people are such heroes and very few people, sadly, accept such a definition. For them, a hero is someone who takes violent action which kills a lot of other people. They have nothing but contempt for the moral hero. Normally they send them death threats for betraying their comrades and country. It is such distortions of moral value which have got us to this point, distortions so fundamental to the culture we now live in we cannot even see them. But these are the distortions we need to root out if things are to heal.

Hey anybody who can point a light at this subject Should come out of the woodwork. If everybody said the little part they know, we might have a real democracy.

Thanks to wiredwilly (1:11) for bringing up Milgram.

Let us take Zimbardo's idea to its next logical step. That is: the whole criminal enterprise of this invasion established the context for all of the sordid and criminal acts that followed. Abu Ghraib is merely one element of many, all of which were bound to happen in one form or another.

Here's something even worse, these men and women are back on the streets of the good ole USA. They have never been psychologically evaluated for their behaviors, many if not all, have not received treatment spiritual or mental/emotional, and have shown no public remorse for their participation in heinous acts of torture.

I am horrified by the fact that our soldiers took pictures creating a torture pornography, played hardcore sexually exhilarating music as they gun down people, and engage in torture, all of which has been condoned by the compassionate Christian whose favorite philosopher was Jesus. Maybe that should have been our clue as a nation - to call a Holy Man, a Prophet, a Prince of Peace - a philosopher. Like the teachings of Jesus was some sort of philosophy that you could adhere to or not and still be a compassionate Christian.

Many of these same "sick" beings are patrolling our streets as policemen and women, in our national guard and working for private security. They have already crossed the line spiritually and ethically and without healing and treatment remain a threat to themselves and society as a whole

How shall we ever redeem our national dignity, and then I think of what we did to the First Nations Peoples and the Africans and remember that what little dignity we did have, has always seemed to fall short of our spiritual ethics as a nation and a peoples.

Maybe, just maybe, "good soldiers" turn into sadists because they grew up in a violent culture - violent tv, violent movies, violent video games and they got off on these vicariously and when a gun is put into their hands and there are no rules, they can act out what they have been nurtured on, and watched vicariously.

My father had to fight to defend Finland from Russian invasion in 1939 and although Finland was outnumbered 10 to 1 and the Russians were the enemy, he said that he felt sick to his stomach every time he had to kill a Russian soldier. He wondered how many children will become orphans because of his act. But it was his life against the Russian. He thought about the grieving widow. He grieved for every soldier he had to kill.

The Russians who became prisoners were immediately given cigarettes to make them feel comfortable. They were fed well. They were well treated. My dad and his comrades sympathized with "the enemy" and understood that these individual soldiers were not their real enemies - the leaders were.

I think the culture one comes from can determine if one behaves badly or not when placed in a situation where they have absolute power.

1messengerofmany February 29th, 2008 4:51 pm,
I concur. There is a frightening trend to ignore the deep and often hidden consequences of these behaviors. Beyond the apparent and, in most cases, treated wounds of war and violence, the inner wounds are ignored or not acknowledged as "real". To have these wounded and hurting people in positions of power and authority is a disservice to them and to those they are supposed to be securing. And, those who are in "normal" circumstances as family, friends, associates and co-workers are ticking time-bombs, awaiting the trigger that releases the stuffed trauma which they will never heal or acknowledge as long as the stigma of their actions is untreated.

I would hope that those running for office, at any level, make this an issue, now. It will arise, but the sooner it is acknowledged, the less the damage to all of us.

peace,
"I am Committed to Oneness through Justice and Transformation"
st john

Namaste - Milgram did the study at Stanford about 40-50 years ago.

He almost lost tenure over the methodology before the significance was realized. And yes it was called early.

These findings demonstrate the need to take back our government and return it to rule of law - not rule of men. Cheney and Bush are prime examples of pathological mentalities at play.

On January 5, 2006, [during one of my five trips to occupied Palestine] I traveled to Ramallah and to the Headquarters of ADAMEER [Arabic for conscience] and met with Ala Jaradat of the organization ADAMEER who informed me:

"The methods and photos from Abu Grahib and Guantanamo were no shock to any Palestinian who had been in prison between 1967 and the '80's. All the methods used in Abu Grahib were normal procedures against Palestinians. In 1999 Internationals, Palestinians and Israelis for human rights threatened a boycott against Israel and that is what forced the Supreme Court to address the torture issue. They did not ban torture and the General Prosecutor can choose not to prosecute those who still use it."

The rest of that interview was reposted on WAWA Blog February 28, 2008:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/

Take a look at that picture of the guy with the wires attached to him. THAT is why they hate us.

When the U.S. is finally invaded the way fascist Germany was invaded, the entering armies will carry as their common banner a black silhouette of the torture victim and the wires attached to him because that is what unites the world against us.

Everyone forgets.

US troops scheduled to be invading Iraq were trained 5000 at a time by the IDF in the art commiting war crimes.

As a non-American the thing I find amazing is that these US polices are creating 'terrorists' faster than American can kill them. This seems very tragic and foolish but then I never went to Yale.

well in the first place the troops are not randomly selected- they have volunteered to join the military. Although if course many of them had no clue what they were signing up for, if it was before the invasion began. Just the same once the military has these young people in their clutches, they do train them to be killers. So then when they get in the field (or the prison) they are already primed to behave like loony assassins. Some then proceed to do so and get all excited about it. Then very often when they come home they revert to being more or less normal people, remember what they did and get the ptsds or commit suicide. But it really stars with the military mentality, not no lucifer effect.

Bush, as the Commander-in-Chief is reponsible. He lied to get our nation to attack Iraq. He told his high-level staff members to "take off the gloves" and do whatever it took to get good intel on the "enemy".

Torture is immoral. George Washington banned it during the Revolution, even while the British and Hessian enemy troops were practicing barbarities on the battle-field.

Torture does NOT even result in actionable intelligence, because the victim will resort to telling the perpetrator what they believe the torturer wants to hear.

Thank God that we only have to endure the vote-rigging, religious fanatic in the White House whose neo-emperialist policies led to the global instability that culminated in the September 11th attacks, for only some 225 more days. Bush is the poster boy for meddlesome and arrogant American geo-political bad behavior. He is our nations' most unqualified and most dangerous "President".

If our neighbor down the street suspected that another neighbor was plotting something evil, and, convinced other neighbors to join him in a group effort to attack the neighbor in his home and, kill him and those around him who tried to defend the house-hold, we would find the lunatic responsible for the carnage to be guilty of vigilante homicide without much hesitation.

Worse, if that neighbor was a gunshop owner who sold the guns and bullets to the neighbors who helped him behave in this vigilante murder spree, we would regard him as one who profits from an illegal act of violence and we would ask the judge to sentence the man AND his cohorts accordingly.

The system that underlies this geo-political trainwreck known as neo-conservatism is, simply put, fascism parading as something noble.

That Bush and his associates profit from the war and the suffering add to the evil.

His Justice should rightly be manifested here on earth, but will likely, given the nature of his packed federal courts, not take place until Mr. Bush experiences the Perfect Justice of the Highest Court.

looking at the pictures linked to this, i am strongly reminded of lynching photos that used to be sent out as friendly postcards from one white person to another.
smiling white faces, brutalized bodies, the times change but the story continues. Its an old story, but not infinitely so. I don't think it's a question of human nature so much as it is a question of cultural patterns and predisposition. And it's not only a white thing, its just that there is a long long tradition of violence in European culture. Before the lynchings there were the Indian wars, before this continent was colonized there were witch burnings and the inquisition, the christian conquest of europe. Like domestic violence, trauma repeats itself through the generations.

I appreciate your perspective, JCollins.

And i look at 'redemptive violence' theology and then it is no surprise. The narrative of the sinful humans who are saved by a God sacrificing his 'Son', to Roman state sponsored terrorism and torture, etc. So much for the 'compassionate' God.

Blood sacrifice is part of the religious mythology. Maybe it is time we reconsider the stories we tell ourselves?

Really, wouldn't you think if they believed in rights for prisoners they would have made sure everything was running smoothly?

If they knew abuse was going on and did not want the outside world to see it, wouldn't they have made taking pictures a no no?

They wanted those pictures to be seen by Muslims of the World so as to (hopfully) humiliate and thus infuriate them into a violent frenzy. The desire was- world wide violence they could pin the Muslim label on and then bomb any country(most notably Iran)they felt had something to offer $$$$$$$$$

oh and the other thing is without in any way minimizing the horribleness of prison torture the really awful horror is the war itself- the bombs, the house raids the targeted civilians, checkpoint murders, Fallujah, Haditha....

"They took pictures of everything," Zimbardo said."

So did the Nazis.

Ditto to pretty much, though not everything, that has been said here.

In particular to:
* Golddogs
* Paradigm: if you are arguing that we stop telling ourselves nonsensical myths about heroism and suffering, and instead focus on generating kindness and peace instead of violence as a way of resolving disputes)
* Americanexile: though relying on Eschatology for Justice is not my bag - let's spread peace and wisdom now rather than hope for revenge
* bfeam: spot on, only this seems to be intentional, make enemies, invest in military industrial stock, create an entrenched need for ongoing growth in military industrial spending, bingo - assure a legacy of wealth for your descendants for decades to come (assuming that the planet is still habitable that far down the line)
* curmudgeon99: you are shifting the focus of responsibility from the American People and the people they elect for the things that they have done. There will be no change for the American people if they do not accept responsibility for their own actions and the actions of the people who they elect and fail to impeach or otherwise extirpate.
* notsonaive: beauty in your tragic words

...as well as the dynamic discussion about the Milgrem / Stanford experiments.

At the end of the day though, it is wisdom and compassion only that we will have any hope of finding our way through this minefield. We need at the same time to be focusing on environment and global warming, population issues to get through this.

Ah yes, Curmudgeon99, how could we forget that the Israelis helped train and prepare our troops for the shock and awe campaign.

Mmmooo, America chose to accept the training from the "much experienced" IDF. I accept responsibility for my actions, I was out in the streets protesting before the war on Iraq began. Bush did the opposite of his every campaign promise - although he has united us all in our disgust of him and his cabal.

IMPEACH NOW.

Whoever the next president is, even McCain, all of us should write to the White House asking for him (her?) to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes, and to get the Military Commissions Act repealed.

The Lucifer Effect is our War Culture producing brainless heartless murdering drones. Programmed by their flag-waving 'raghead' hating FoxNews watching parents-that is the Lucifer Effect.

Free will is the idea that you can make a decision that is not dependent on your heredity or experience. But if you haven't learned it and it's not built in, where did it come from? Free will is like random number generation, it appears to exist because we don't understand what produced it. There are no random numbers, only numbers produced by things that appear random to us because we don't understand them.

President Bush maintains that he is fighting a war against threats to the "values of civilized nations": terror, cruelty, barbarism and extremism.

The U.S. Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis came forward to say that torture was common practice in Iraq and that he had himself tortured prisoners while stationed in Mosul in 2004: "We would bring in dogs. They would be muzzled dogs, but the prisoner would be blindfolded so he wouldn't realise the dog was muzzled. We would try to terrify them and induce pain, put them in stress positions, sleep deprivation, all of these together to break down the prisoner." Subsequent reports indicated that each of those interrogation policies was approved by then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Lagouranis says his immediate superiors devised the torture he meted out: "My superiors organised the dogs. They had organised the shipping container that we would use to maintain these prisoners in this state and they just told us, 'This is what we're going to do for this guy' or 'We've targeted this person for this and that's what you're going to do' and we followed orders."
The US has devised every possible means of inflicting pain. One should never underestimate the US capacity for inventing new methods. US interrogators have found a new way of destroying a human being. Take the example of Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant". His warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for "a piece of furniture". He has been subject to total isolation and sensory deprivation. He has been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators.
The forensic psychiatrist who examined him says that he "does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation." Jose Padilla appears to have been lobotomized: not medically, but socially. The US interrogators know: "if you want to erase a man's mind, deprive him of contact with the rest of the world. This has nothing to do with obtaining information: torture of all kinds – physical or mental – produces the result that people will say anything to make it end." It is about power, and one man's power over another is unlimited. It is an indulgence which turns its perpetrators into everything they claim to be confronting.
The Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project (DAA), a coalition of academics and human rights groups, has documented the abuse or killing of 460 inmates of US military prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. This, it says, is necessarily a conservative figure: many cases will remain unrecorded. The prisoners were beaten, raped, forced to abuse themselves, forced to maintain "stress positions", and subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation and mock executions. The New York Times reports that prisoners held by the US military at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan were made to stand for up to 13 days with their hands chained to the ceiling, naked, hooded and unable to sleep. The Washington Post alleges that prisoners at the same airbase were "commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep." Alfred McCoy, professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argues that the photographs released from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq reflect standard CIA torture techniques: "stress positions, sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation".
The revelation that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed at least two video tapes depicting the torture of prisoners held by the United States underscores the brazen criminality of the Bush administration and confirmed that Abu Ghraib, far from an aberration, was the outcome of US government policy. The Head of the CIA by law executes directives of the President of the United States of America. Justice Department issued a secret opinion endorsing the harshest techniques the CIA has ever used, according to a report in the New York Times. This was not the first time the Bush administration had officially endorsed torture, however. John Yoo, writing for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, penned an August 2002 memorandum that rewrote the legal definition of torture to require the equivalent of organ failure. This memo violated the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a treaty the United States ratified
And it is not just the White House. Torture is bipartisan. The recent House of Representatives intelligence appropriations bill included a clause that requires CIA to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its interrogation and detention policies. One hundred and ninety-nine Congressmen from both parties voted "no." There is a strong sense that many politicians consider torture to be perfectly okay.

In May 2007 the Pentagon Inspector General declassified a report that provided concrete evidence that methods developed by the US military for withstanding torture were being used to develop interrogation techniques against prisoners. There is a special school, a secretive school, called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE). That is where the US trains elite troops to resist, if captured by an enemy who ignores the Geneva Conventions, things like waterboarding, stress positions, sexual humiliation, hooding and isolation in very, very small pens. It is intended to teach those soldiers to resist those illegal tactics if they are captured. The high-level coordination between the CIA and the US military is seen in developing the interrogation methods relying on psychologists very close to this SERE program. The two psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who have been affiliated with SERE training, were employed by the CIA as contractors to do the same thing that the military was doing, which was to flip these tactics around and use them on the US prisoners.

How can the cruel and inhumane culture of America be described? Jason Miller calls it "Americanistic Personality Disorder". The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one's self and one's nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological. Typically indoctrinated from birth to believe that they are morally superior, exceptional human beings, these individuals suffer from severe egocentrism. Individuals with Americanistic Personality Disorder almost always rely on extortion or violence to get their needs met and to resolve conflict. Believing in their inherent superiority, they eschew laws or rules except when they can utilize them for personal gain or when they fear punishment. Given a choice between a just resolution to a situation and the opportunity to humiliate, subdue, or subjugate the other party, they will choose the latter with a high degree of frequency. They have an amazing capacity to justify their unethical or criminal behavior using false pretexts such as self defense, good intentions, ignorance of the consequences of their actions, or asserting that they were merely carrying out orders.

"Abu Ghraib abuses went on for three months … Who was watching the store? Nobody, and it was on purpose."

What and then they just stopped? Now the untried, held for years, prisoners at secret prisons across Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the world get books, recreation, three meals a day, letters home, visits from family. The immense danger is that so much of the world now think this is over. In their dreams.

There are not a 'few bad apples' the entire barrell has been contaminated by the ditching of every international law and treaty at the very top. An occasional, rare, endangered species of good apple just very occasionally, emerges.

Deepa, the characteristics you describe define Washington politicians. In addition they are always blaming the system not themselves.

Two quick points:

1 - The events depicted in these pictures portray a dispicable and dishonorable view of America, the American military, and the events shown should have never taken place. Period.

2 - I put up with WAY worse in college intramural events, fraternaty events, and general hazing by upper classmates. I was forced to eat and drink disgusting things, do things I normally would not have done, shocking things, acts of perversion SO profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here. This was called "fun", and to some extent the majority of college students go through some form of it.

2 - I put up with WAY worse in college intramural events, fraternaty events, and general hazing by upper classmates. I was forced to eat and drink disgusting things, do things I normally would not have done, shocking things, acts of perversion SO profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here. This was called "fun", and to some extent the majority of college students go through some form of it.

I don't believe you. Some of the photos are of corpses, people who have been killed through torture. I suspect you refuse to list the tortures you were subjected to because they weren't, in fact, worse than what went on at Abu Ghraib.

http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/06_politic.html

So Americans-in voting for the Bush White House-voted for deliberate evil, eh?
Hardly a surprise. I think people knew exactly what they were doing. I think everything about this current conservative administration was as deliberate as deliberate can be.
These findings come as no surprise. People were under orders to treat people as they were treated. You will never convince me otherwise. Evil is, as evil does.

so pdf; you were hung upside down naked, handcuffed by the ankles to the ceiling and beaten half to death while being electrocuted; a cattle prod shoved up your rectum while coca-cola was dripped through a tube into your nostrils and your mouth was duct-taped? (real waterboarding)....

Whoa, you must be one tough guy if that was no big deal.

The degree to which one minimizes the agony and death of others is the degree to which one sanctions it.

Maybe if those people had blond hair and blue eyes their pain would seem more real pdf.

To a little light.

I can buy his theory to a certain extent. We have a government that hasn't had much oversight in the last 7 years. I would imagine most of us would be horrified to find out what they have done. But, I can not buy his theory of the barrel being the problem. It's been my experience that it's the few bad apples in the barrel that rot the whole barrel! Because the ones who aren't bad usually go along with what is being done for a variety of reasons. Either that or they leave the barrel. And again, I will use our current administration as a example rather than use the German's as an example. I think we have all figured out by now that Bush's idea of Democracy, patriotism and the Constitution isn't the same as most American's. He is a fascist at heart and the wrong man for the job. One either learns to overlook what they know is wrong or they are quickly replaced in his Administration. He keeps only the party hacks around him. So as a result the whole barrel over time has become rotten through and through.

Wikipedia has a good brief account of Stanley Milgram's experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

WOW deepa March 1st, 2008 2:06

profound postings. deeply troubling and profound.

I spent 20 years in some of the toughest Calif prisons (all of it paid), and can assure you that the same type of things go on in your local prison. Power corrupts.... absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The only reason you don't see and or hear about it: The prison guard union will not allow cameras and or unscheduled visitors into the prison.

If you want to freak out a prison guard; tell them you want a drug sniffing dog at the front gate. It has never happened.... it will not happen. I always contended that if you said there was a poodle at the front gate, 90% of the officers would call in sick that day.

I am in now way condoning the abuse in Iraq and or here at home. It is a rotten system, and needs to stop. But, it won't stop there, until we stop it here.

I once superimposed an Abu Ghraib guy on the GOP elephant and posted it around the internet. But that seemed to scare people. A statement, but maybe a little too strong?

I spent 20 years in some of the toughest Calif prisons (all of it paid), and can assure you that the same type of things go on in your local prison. Power corrupts.... absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The only reason you don't see and or hear about it: The prison guard union will not allow cameras and or unscheduled visitors into the prison.

If you want to freak out a prison guard; tell them you want a drug sniffing dog at the front gate. It has never happened.... it will not happen. I always contended that if you said there was a poodle at the front gate, 90% of the officers would call in sick that day.

I am in now way condoning the abuse in Iraq and/or here at home. It is a rotten system, and needs to stop. But, it won't stop there, until we stop it here.

I once superimposed an Abu Ghraib guy on the GOP elephant and posted it around the internet. But that seemed to scare people. A statement, but maybe a little too strong?

What is incomprehensible is, if the system is evil and not the person who is acting inhumanly towards a fellow human being, then why the same Americans blame Nazis for the holocaust, instead of blaming the SYSTEM. Why is Charles Taylor facing war crimes in Hague?

The only premise on which Philip Zimbardo's assessment is based is: Americans are morally superior and they can not inflict pain, suffering, and death to fellow human beings. So the scapegoat is: the SYSTEM.

Mind you, this conclusion is limited only to the Americans. If someone else does the same, it is that person who is evil, not the system.

Don't you see this double standard in the American rhetoric. In a country which is founded on the innocent blood, and then call itself " a city on a hill" (and "a light to the world") Philip Zimbardo's conclusion is not unusal.

"Abu Ghraib Prison Turned Soldiers Evil by Design"
how about
"Military Turns Soldiers Evil by Design"
or
"Prisons Help Turn Prisoners More Evil by Design"
or
"Whole Society Turned Evil by Design"?

The military uses some of these same techniques on the young men and women who join the military...thereby turning a majority of agressive teenagers into Killing Machines...(by the way most of these youngsters ARE promised an Education, Employment, and Salaries that our Dysfunctional Society doesn't provide...why? because WE would rather give our taxes to the Military instead of Education and Libraries and family support systems)

WE have trained our youngsters to be egocentric and cold killers with video games and violence being quite acceptable with bullying in the "factory schools" going unnoticed...
not to mention domestic violence that goes unreported or Rape victims who go unreported

but hey, take those prozac and everything will be okay...

Our nation has been sold out on so many levels.