“The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism” is written by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak. The author is a reporter for the U.S. News & World Report. The author has written this article to explain how and why such instances as Abu Ghraib and others are being allowed to occur. The author claims that the isolation of the prison, and the natural cruelty that is present in humans is the main reason that the atrocities are being allowed to occur. However, the author fails to recognize the ways that authority
detainees in Abu Ghraib prison and the physical and psychological consequences resulting from months of daily abuse at the hands of U.S military soldiers. Keller’s article suggests the importance of supervisory forensic psychological evaluations and by implementing such tools on prisoners can ensure physical and mental stability. Keller also documented the tool used in the examinations of said detainees as the Istanbul protocol. The goal is to provide empirical analysis of Abu Ghraib detainee’s long
the atrocities at Abu Ghraib will forever stand as some of the most severe. Three main factors resulted in the amoral treatment at Abu Ghraib, substandard working conditions, conflicting leadership, and a lack of moral code. The gruesome events will forever stain the reputation of the Military Intelligence (MI) Corps. In Iraq in 2003, the US set its sights on Abu Ghraib to facilitate the rising number of criminals and detainees from combat operations. Saddam Hussein used Abu Ghraib as a prison for
published her article, "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism," in 2004. She uses the article to briefly overview the scandal as a whole before diving into what can trigger sadistic behavior. The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal took place in 2004, wherein American troops humiliated and tortured Iraqi detainees (Szegedy-Maszak 75). The main objective of Szegedy-Maszak’s article is to investigate the causation behind sadistic behavior, exclusively in the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal. She effectively
When the news of torture at Abu Ghraib prison broke in early 2004 during the “global war on terror,” much of the public was outraged and did not know how to react. Heavy debate began over the issue and media reporters on the issues took sides. Many books were written about the subject. The conservatives attempted to downsize the issues and take the side that it was simply ‘bored’ and ‘tense’ soldiers trying to blow off a little steam with horseplay. However, the photographs that surface said quite
Abu Ghraib: Sociological and Theological Interpretation 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
The Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal One of the ways that the Stanford Prison Experiment was different than the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal is that in the Stanford Prison Experiment they had roles. Half of the boys were given, the role of prisoners and the other half of the boys was given the role of the prisoner guards. This meant that the half that was guards had the power, whereas the prisoners were powerless because they had to do whatever the guards told them to do. Therefore
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
instances like the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse of prisoners? Should the blame go to the prison guards, should the blame go to those in higher power involved with Abu Ghraib, or should the blame go all the way up to President George W. Bush, the one who started the war? The answer is simple; blaming just one of them would turn out to be a cheap scapegoat. What happened in the Abu Ghraib prison can not be put into any category and the blame can not be put onto one person. The Abu Ghraib abuse and torture
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
Feminism The notion of difference among the sexes has been studied extensively in terms of cognition and brain activity. An MRI can back these claims, showing male and female brains 'lighting up' in different locations based upon different stimuli. Anyone with a close relationship to a child can attest to the fact that they were born with certain traits. Perhaps their nephew is very shy, while their niece has never met a stranger. In other words, some difference among individuals is innate, fundamental
Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal 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
Comparative Analysis The power of blind obedience taints individuals’ ability to clearly distinguish between right and wrong in terms of obedience, or disobedience, to an unjust superior. In the article “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism,” Marianne Szegedy-Maszak discusses the unwarranted murder of innocent individuals due to vague orders that did not survive with certainty. Szegedy-Maszak utilizes the tactics of authorization, routinization, and dehumanization, respectively, to attempt
How Should Prisoners of War be Treated? In an op-ed piece for the New York Times, entitled "George W. to George W.," Thomas Friedman writes about the treatment of prisoners in United States custody being held in Iraq and Afghanistan. Friedman writes in his "George W." piece that “We killed 26 of our prisoners of war. In 18 cases, people have been recommended for prosecution or action by their supervising agencies, and eight other cases are still under investigation.” Friedman goes on to write
charged and violent entity concerned with having “fun,” the heinous photos depicting the torture of terrorists at Abu Ghraib is as much their fault, as it is the Bush administration’s. Though Sontag is effective in proving the administration’s liability, her extreme parallels of Americans to Nazis, fraternal organization practices and video games to the torture committed in Abu Ghraib make the essay and her argument overall ineffective. In Section I., Sontag is able to artfully make the reader understand
experiments and real life events all reflect that human beings succumb to obedience even when common sense tells them that what they are doing is wrong. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment, Milgram’s electric shock study, and the scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib are reflections on the outcome of obeying a command regardless of the results and why someone would do so. An experiment by Zimbardo provided insight on how a regular person changes roles when placed within a specific social setting. The Stanford
Now sure, the Stanford prison guards didn’t go that far as the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib but the torture and abuse towards the prisoners became worse by the day indicating they could have gone as far as Abu Ghraib. However, in both cases there are unusual punishments and cruelty. This was due to the authority allowing it, ordering it, just didn’t care or didn’t know. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment
to the roles of either prisoners or guards for a period of six days (Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G., 1973). This study alone, demonstrates the power of authority, conformity, moral justification, and various other phenomenons seen in Abu Ghraib. In the Stanford Prison Experiments, both prisoners and guards, conformed to their roles and as such guards began to dehumanize the prisoners, a theory attributed to the dehumanization is the sunglasses the guards wore; the sunglasses were believed
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
contractor whose subsidiary was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to torture detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq paid $5.28 million dollars to 71 former prisoners held there and at other U.S. run detention sites between 2003 and 2007. The settlement in the case involving Engility Holdings Inc. of Chantilly, Virginia marked the first successful effort by lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers to collect money from a U.S. defense contractor in lawsuits alleging