Abu Ghraib is one of the worst prison scandals to this date. 3,800 detainees were under the care of U.S. soldiers at the U.S. military detention center in Iraq from 2003 to 2006 during the Iraq war. While in prison the detainees were beaten, humiliated, tortured and abused by eleven U.S. soldiers. The detainees might have been good people but once they went through all they did inside the prison most, if not all, of them have been psychologically changed. Putting any good person in any evil situation with psychologically change them. Baghdad, Iraq was the home on Abu Ghraib prison, where one of the most inhumane acts of soldiers against detainees took place. U.S. soldiers were guards at the prison during the Iraq war. While there the soldiers tortured, abused, and assaulted the detainees. These soldiers got so out of hand by having no supervision, no training, no accountability, fear, stress, head exhaustion and overall boredom. Photographs were taken of naked inmates. They were interrogated with non-muzzled dogs, physically harmed, forced to have sex with the soldier and other inhuman acts. Detainees were humiliated by the soldiers even after death. Putting good people in an evil situation like this will cause the detainees to become psychologically unhealthy. When around an unhealthy situation long enough …show more content…
Zimbardo, PhD. argues that the prison in Abu Ghraib was psychologically changed due to their abuse. Zimbardo says, “The line between good and evil is permeable.” Situations will pull people into acting ways they never have imagined before. The Stanford Prison Study was a film that brought college students in to play roles of prisoners and guards. After only six days the guards became abusive and brutal towards the prisoners. Zimbardo put on this experiment and found that “institutional forces and peer pressure lead normal student volunteer guards to disregard the potential harm of their actions on the other student
The Implications of the Stanford Prison Experiment In 1971 Dr Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment in the basement of Stanford University. This involved imprisoning nine volunteers in a mock up of Stanford prison, which was policed by nine guards (more volunteers). These guards had complete control over the prisoners. They could do anything to the prisoners, but use physical violence.
In this study Zimbardo chose 21 participants from a pool of 75, all male college students, screened prior for mental illness, and paid $15 per day. He then gave roles. One being a prisoner and the other being a prison guard, there were 3 guards per 8 hour shift, and 9 total prisoners. Shortly after the prisoners were arrested from their homes they were taken to the local police station, booked, processed, given proper prison attire and issued numbers for identification. Before the study, Zimbardo concocted a prison setting in the basement of a Stanford building. It was as authentic as possible to the barred doors and plain white walls. The guards were also given proper guard attire minus guns. Shortly after starting the experiment the guards and prisoners starting naturally assuming their roles, Zimbardo had intended on the experiment lasting a fortnight. Within 36 hours one prisoner had to be released due to erratic behavior. This may have stemmed from the sadistic nature the guards had adopted rather quickly, dehumanizing the prisoners through verbal, physical, and mental abuse. The prisoners also assumed their own roles rather efficiently as well. They started to rat on the other prisoners, told stories to each other about the guards, and placated the orders from the guards. After deindividuaiton occurred from the prisoners it was not long the experiment completely broke down ethically. Zimbardo, who watched through cameras in an observation type room (warden), had to put an end to the experiment long before then he intended
The Stanford Prison Experiment commenced in 1973 in pursuit of Zimbardo needed to study how if a person are given a certain role, will they change their whole personality in order to fit into that specific role that they were given to. Zambrano significantly believed that personality change was due to either dispositional, things that affect personal life and make them act differently. Or situational, when surrounded by prisoners, they can have the authority to do whatever they want without having to worry about the consequences. Furthermore, it created a group of twenty-four male participants, provided them their own social role. Twelve of them being a prisoners and the other twelve prison guards, all of which were in an examination to see if they will be able to handle the stress that can be caused based upon the experiment, as well as being analysis if their personality change due to the environment or their personal problems.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. The experiment was a landmark study of the human response to captivity, in particular, to the real world circumstances of prison life. In social psychology, this idea is known as “mundane realism”. Mundane realism refers to the ability to mirror the real world as much as possible, which is just what this study did. Twenty-four subjects were randomly assigned to play the role of "prisoner" or "guard" and they were made to conform to these roles.
Abu Ghraib was originally an Iraqi prison, one of the worst where torture, murder and inhumane living conditions was part of the everyday life. After riots happened and the inmates escaped from this prison, the United States took this prison over and used it to house suspects involved in acts against the coalition as well as suspects who were high value leaders of the insurgency. Army Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was put in charge of this prison and was eventually suspended after an investigation was done into this prison system. SSG Frederick was assigned to the 372nd MP’s doing police duties and routine traffic work, but in October of 2003 his unit was placed to prison guard duty at Abu Ghraib. Major
In Abu Ghraib, the prisoners’ faces were covered with hoods and the prison was covered up with walls that made the prison an island where morality was no longer there due to the three traits that the soldier went through. To understand how individuals can kill innocent children, women, men, and elders, Philip G. Zimbardo did The Stanford prison experiment. In the book, Zimbardo highlighted three psychological truths. The first is that the world is full of both evil and good, the barrier between the two is absorbent, and angels and devils can switch.
Boys of Abu Ghraib is a movie about the war crimes committed by American soldiers on Baghdad soil. These war crimes shocked the nation because no one believed that Americans could be capable of such heinous acts, while others believed the prisoners had it coming of them and they deserved it. Abu Ghraib was a military prison in the west of Baghdad for Iraqi citizens who were thought to be suspected terrorists. This prison is known for being one of the most notorious prisons due to the immense amount of torture, violence, executions, and atrocious living conditions. The detainee’s were forced to pile on top of each other, forced to stay naked for days at a time, attaching wires to their
In short, the movie The Ghost of Abu Ghraib is about military police becoming prison guards for the Abu Ghraib prison. They had to watch hundreds of detainees at once, which could have been very dangerous if they came together to attack the guards. There was some torture at this time, but things really started to get worst when military intelligence took control over the military police. The interrogation tactics became harsher and the military police were forced to become more involved in the interrogation processes. They were told to do whatever they had to do to keep the detainees awake at night, have them naked most of the time, put them in stressor positions, anything to get information out of them. The military police didn’t necessarily agree with everything intelligence was telling them to do, but they did it any ways because they had too, it
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. This situation has a lot in common with the Stanford Prison Experiment. In both situations they’re very similar. For the prisoners at the Stanford Prison experiment to even use the bathroom they had to be blindfolded so they could not find any escape routes and know the way out. There was a hole in the wall at then end of the “court yard” that held a video recorder which would video tape everything that was going on. Including the pornographic and emotional abuse of the prisoners. There was also a rumored escape that a guard overheard the prisoners talking about. They roped their prisoners together and put bags over their heads and walked them all to a small room until the suspected people to break them out showed up. In the end it was all just a rumor. No one came to save the prisoners. The way that the guards fought back was making the prisoners do unethical and repulsive tasks. Their disgusting tasks ended up going as far as making the prisoners scrub the toilets with their own
In the pursuit of safety, acceptance, and the public good, many atrocities have been committed in places such as Abu Ghraib and My Lai, where simple, generally harmless people became the wiling torturers and murderers of innocent people. Many claim to have just been following orders, which illustrates a disturbing trend in both the modern military and modern societies as a whole; when forced into an obedient mindset, many normal and everyday people can become tools of destruction and sorrow, uncaringly inflicting pain and death upon the innocent.
Mazzetti, Mark, Julian E. Barnes, Edward T. Pound, David E. Kaplan, and Linda Robinson. "Inside the Iraq Prison Scandal. (cover story)" EbscoHost. N.p., 24 Oct. 2004. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
...en and women. The “victims” sitting in Guantanamo are being tortured for crimes not committed by them and are being rewarded with no families or loved ones and psychological trauma. Through many studies it has been proven that these victims will commit to false information just to stop the pain. Enhanced interrogation is one of the more popular techniques used to induce information from possible suspects; however, this technique is immoral in ways such as, but not limited to, impacting the victims life, family, and friends, the side effects of enhanced interrogation are disgusting, and in most cases victims admit to the false accusations which is in no way beneficial to the main problem. It has been proven that these methods are ineffective and are often misleading, in fact there are other much more humane methods which have been proven beneficial in many cases.
America prides itself in treated all individuals humanely and fairly, and even one person under force suffering is against what America stands for. America should never justify torture based on our beliefs we were built on. Bruce Anderson says, “A man can retain his human dignity in front of a firing squad or on the scaffold: not in a torture chamber. Torturers set out to break their victim: to take human being and reduce him to a whimpering wreck” (Anderson 1). America does not believe in breaking someone down, but rather build them up. When an American messes up, in jail we continue to build them up. We help them get a college degree, try to work some of their unwanted qualities out, and give them the opportunities to better themselves. America is supposed to be the leader and teach the world that torture is not the answer. That is why nearly a quarter of American people believe torture should never be used of justified (ProQuest 2). Americans still hold the core values that this beautiful country was built
Abu Ghraib is one of the world’s most scandalous prison’s known for its torture (Hersh, 2004). There was approximately fifthly thousand prisoners living in the prison with unpleasant living conditions (Hersh, 2004). Prisoners died from the unpleasant living conditions along with the weekly executions that occurred (Hersh, 2004). In 2003, the Abu Ghraib prison became a military prison for Iraqis that were captured (Iraq Prison Abuse Scandal Fast Facts, 2017). The whole prison got remodel with new toilets, showers, doors, windows, etc. once the prison transformed into a military prison (Hersh, 2004). The military used its discretion in a beneficial way to improve the living conditions of these prisoners. One would think that the military is being
On September 11, 2001, this country was under attack and thousands of Americans died at the hands of terrorists. This action caused the U.S. Military to invade Iraq because of the idea that this country was involved in harboring terrorist and were believed to have weapons of mass destruction. This was an executive order that came down from our government, for us to go in and attack Iraq while searching for those who were responsible for the death of American lives. This war brought in many prisoners whom were part of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, whom the military took into custody many of its lower level members to get tips in capturing higher level members. During the detainees stay at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, many of these prisoners