In the Abu Ghraib prisoners were treated wrong,taken from their rights and it was unlawful. Specialist Garner showed
In the Abu Ghraib prisoners were treated wrong,taken from their rights and it was unlawful. Specialist Garner showed
Throughout this essay, Szegedy-Maszak attempts to answer the question: Are there particular conditions in Iraq that might shed light on why these soldiers committed these unconscionable acts? (Szegedy-Maszak p. 173). She begins by presenting two famous psychological experiments that explore the capacity for evil residing in normal people, (Szegedy-Maszak p. 174). The first experiment, conducted by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, attempted to mimic a real life prison scenario with students impersonating actual guards and prisoners. Surprisingly, the results were analogous to the actual events that took place at Abu Ghraib prison. The second experiment, created by Stanley Milgram, studied some peoples willingness to follow orders. The experiment began with an actor sitting in a chair supposedly wired with electricity. For every wrong answer this actor would give, volunteers were asked to deliver increasingly dangerous electric shocks to the actor in the chair. The results showed that two out of the three volunteers delivered potentially lethal electric shocks.…
The acts of torture performed on the inmates at Abu Ghraib were both cruel and inhumane. But what if the reason the guards tortured the inmates was due to the result of obedience from their superiors. The cause of the torture of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib could have stemmed from situational factors instead of the will of a few aggressive soldiers. Authority figures that use persuasive methods can be very influential. There are many circumstantial possibilities as to why the guards treated the prisoners cruelly. Most people don't attribute the torture to many situational and external causes. In this case, most people attribute the torture to the internal faults of the guards when it could very well be outside sources at fault.…
In the article "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism," Marianne Szegedy- Maszak discusses the horrifying acts of our American soldiers against the Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison. The American guards photographed themselves torturing and humiliating the prisoners. Marianna presents the idea that maybe these few guards aren't just a few bad seeds' but in fact any average person would commit similar acts given the situation.…
America 's Accountability to its Constitution and the Events at Abu Ghraib - ... While I agree that “severe” is a matter of perspective, what went on at Abu Ghraib, the depraved acts against Iraqis and humanity, were certainly torture. Trying to argue against that point would be somewhere on the order of arguing against gravity. The pictures speak for themselves (Unauthored). And also consider this: the woman who took the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs was “…convicted by a court-martial, in May of 2005, of conspiracy to maltreat prisoners, dereliction of duty, and maltreatment, and sentenced to six months in prison, a reduction in rank, and a bad-conduct discharge (Gourevitch).” So the debate of whether or not Abu Ghraib was torture seems…
It is clearly shown when the difference in people's malicious behavior when shocking the students in the presence of authority and when given the freedom to choose the level of shock. The thesis of Milgram's essay was that obedience is a deeply ingrained behavior tendency; indeed, a potent impulse overriding reining ethics, sympathy and moral conduct is right on the dot. He also discusses the extreme willingness of man to obey authority at any length. This shows that "ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." This is proven by the fact that the majority of people were willing to shock students almost to the assumed point of death when instructed to do so by a…
This paper will explore the legally approved torture tactics approved by the Bush administration in Guantanamo Bay, to the dismantlement of the prison and court-bound procedures taken by the Obama administration.…
At Abu Ghraib prison, many people’s lives were changed. Some soldiers were sentenced to prison, some officers were demoted, and the prisoners lost their dignity. When people and soldiers are placed in difficult and stressful situations they will make grave mistakes, but that does not excuse their…
Module Overview: Part 1 Why people do harm to others? • Exposing the authoritarian personality • Just following orders? • Learning from watching Module Overview: Part 2 What determines human behaviour?…
Samson, Steven Alan. “An Evaluation of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience to Authority.” Liberty University.” Liberty University. 6 Mar. 1980. Web. 8 Dec. 2013. Retrieved from < http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/ >.…
An investigation into the treatment of detainees at the prison was issued when photo were discovered of guards abusing detainees in 2003. The human rights violations included: physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder. Many of the torture techniques used were developed at the Guantánamo detention center including prolonged isolation, a sleep deprivation technique where people were moved from cell to cell every few hours, short-shackling in painful positions; nudity; extreme use of heat and cold; the use of loud music and noise and preying on phobias. "Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet...positioning a naked detainee on a MRE box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture...having sex with female detainees...using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee...breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees...Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair...Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick" (qtd. in Behrens and Rosen 665-6). Eleven US soldiers were convicted of crimes relating to the Abu Ghraib scandal. A number of other service members were not charged but reprimanded. Shockingly enough, despite the level of…
From late 2003 to early 2004, during the Iraq War, military police personnel of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency[1] committed human rights violations against prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison. They physically and sexually abused, tortured,[2][3][4] raped,[2][3] sodomized,[4] and killed[5] prisoners.…
The Abu Ghraib prison was a prison in Iraq that was notorious for torturing the prisoners. Some of the violations include murder, sodomy, sexual abuse, and rape. Photographs of each torture mechanism were taken and shown to the government. Many of the American soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal were accused of abuse. The administration of George W. Bush tried to cover up the abuse cases as “isolated incidents”, therefore making it seem as if the torture was only happening to select inmates, and as a form of intense interrogation. It was later revealed that the torture was not conducted on a select few, but conducted throughout groups of the inmates. Some of the abusers in the prison believed that they were doing a good thing.…
After this case had occurred during the Bush administration it was called into question the actions of authority figures, John Brennan current chief of counterterrorism advisor is being promoted after allegations that Brennan "sat idly by as men were being tortured" (Prasow) should…
When obeying authority one can often loose thought of morals and beliefs. In the experiments the men obey the authority figure by doing cruel things they would not usually do. These experiments turn mentally stable men into a person willing to inflict harsh punishments on innocent people while following orders. Night by Elie Wiesel, The Milgram Shock Experiment, and the stanford prison experiment shows how obedience to an authority can cause people to stray from their conscience.…
This means that Milgram has contributed to the fact that people do obey to authority so they won’t face the consequences, or simply to just get a promotion or reward out of it. The Taliban has also forced the supporters to do whatever they command them to do in order to be accepted by the group. Asch was correct about his experiment, because people do conform because they have a desire to be a part of something, making it a basic inability that everyone has. It is true that people do obey and conform, especially within groups, to show that they are tolerated to perform appalling acts that will simply make the person not even think about what they are doing, but for the sake of their own…