Abu Ghraib

I believe I have eared a solid B in the development of this semester of Law and Society. My attendance recorded is clean with no missed lectures, I turned in all the work that was requested of me by introducing it either to the professor or the class, I did most of the reading, and I was actively involved in Dr. Timmons’ lectures. I like to be competitive in every area of my life, and I do believe this class brought out a competitive hunger for knowledge in myself. Furthermore, I believe this is…

Military members are undoubtedly held to a higher standard than the rest of society. Most citizens look to a uniformed military member in times of need. Even though military members are held to a higher standard, there are some circumstances in recent history where uniformed members have not met the standard. Torture in the military is one of these circumstances in which military members are not meeting the standard. Once the definition of torture is recognized, then torture should not be…

detainees. Fair had control of his action while performing inhumane acts toward prisoners, but what Fair did not have control over was his loss of humanity. A huge toll was taken by his mental state because of this lack of control he felt. Fair stated, “Abu Ghraib dominates every minute of every day for me” (Fair). He continued to say, “Memories of that have haunted me for the last decade”. (Fair). Overall Fair’s lack of control toward his humanity led him toward drastic mental…

Effect, Zimbardo evaluates the notorious merciless actions passed out by the U.S. military employees in Abu Ghraib penitentiary. This part alone is worth every penny of the book. This part is not just extremely comprehensive, both emotionally and mentally, it also suggests the alarming viewpoint of an insider at the job, Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick. He was a manager on the evening shift at Abu Ghraib jail and one of the main wrongdoers in the abuse scandal. Zimbardo acted as a professional…

by our culture. I’m not surprised by the results. I know I would have complied. I wouldn’t want to disappoint the researcher, he is an authority figure, which intimidates me. If you were hired by the military to ensure that we never had another Abu Ghraib case, what would you do? Well, training is important. If it is partly because of social roles, that is tough, because in the military you are assigned with the role of warrior. Cognitive dissonance is a factor, so teaching compassion? But that…

moral psychology and combat, supporting the argument that war is very often cognitively degrading enough to prevent the ability to behave morally therefore rendering those individuals at war not morally culpable. The atrocities committed in combat at Abu…

agentic shift where they feel they are just a vessel for carrying out orders. Just like the Nazi soldiers, it is common to hear words like "I was just following orders" being used as an explanation to the tortures and killings that happened in the Abu Ghraib prison. This is because soldiers are already trained to obey their…

Comparative Critique on Obedience from Szegedy-Maszak and Milgram In Marianne Szegedy-Maszak's article The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism, explains how psychologically these American soldiers could commit such vial acts. She then explores the possibilities pertaining to the situation and conditions these solders were withstanding. Szegedy-Maszak then delves into psychologist Herbert Kelman's three necessary traits to convict torture: authorization, routinization, and…

prison. The mock prison experiment created by Dr. Zimbardo helped explain the 2003 case of Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq where detainees were being severely mistreated by the soldiers on guard. Zimbardo claimed that the guards were only acting based on the situation at hand, and that "majority of people can be made to do almost anything when put into psychologically compelling situations-". In Abu Ghraib, the American soldiers were ordered to detain and imprison Iraqis. Based on information…

for acquiring intelligence from detainees (even the most “high-value”) was to confront the detainees with information already acquired by the intelligence community. In 2009, a former FBI agent, Ali Soufan, who had taken part in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah seven years earlier, said that all the useful intelligence came from traditional non-violent questions, and that his later waterboarding produced nothing further of…