Nice assertions you’re touting as fact. You wouldn’t happen to have any actual evidence for them, would you?
What the West Virginians or the Stamford students - examples; West Virginians as per the above link, Stamford students as per anything you like that results from Googling Zimbardo + prison experiemnt + Stamford.
I don’t think I said anything controversial ? 
Are you or are you not asserting that the guards who committed atrocities at Abu Ghraib were doing so under orders from their commanders? If so, I suggest you reassess that assertion.
Why? I thought some directives from Rumsfeld had shown that they were acting under orders. The only thing they did against orders was get caught.
-Joe
Change “orders” to “supervision”, and I’ll say yes. I don’t see any ethical difference between directly ordering someone to do these things and simply allowing them to be done, particularly given the power and authority to stop them.
Then you’re woefully unaware of the workings of the military. For one thing, those who “simply allowed it to occur” also faced punishment. For another, those who–on their own–decided to break the law and abuse the prisoners also faced punishment.
I know some of you would love to pin all the blame on a particular high-ranking individual (one whom I don’t particularly like either) and just pretend that servicemembers are unthinking, mindless drones. The simple fact is they’re not. Some of them commit crimes and are held accountable for that. I’m sorry the reality isn’t what you seem to wish it is.
I think you’ve missed the point of the argument, Monty, which, IMO, is that regardless of the motivations and self-accountability of the guards, the specific behaviors we’re now acknowledging as torture and abuse seem to have been condoned by secret policy rather than allowed by poor local leadership. That argument (whether or not it’s been proven) not only shifts the blame up the chain of command to the policy makers (including the chief policy maker), but it also shifts the standard of evidence away from proving that direct orders were issued by the local command structure and towards providing evidence that a policy of coercive random interrogation of prisoners actually exists/existed.
It seems to be the presumption by a few posters in this thread (and at least it’s my presumption) that there’s sufficient evidence for them to support belief in the existence of that policy of torture. Your counterassertion may be that there’s insufficient evidence to legally establish the direct culpability of the SecDef, Veep and POTUS, but I’d personally love to see that tested by Congress and the courts.
I agree that the official policy backed torture. The premise is that much of what happened , the stripping and humiliation, may have occurred anyway,. Rumsfeld and Gonzales certainly showed no remorse. They did everything they could to find justification for torture. They have forever changed us and our standing in the world.
I think you’re both right; Monty’s saying, correctly, that those in the prison who weren’t involved were still obligated by military law to report misbehavior and just as culpable as those who did the actual crimes. Standing idly by and letting crimes go unreported is not a right in the US Military.
The question then becomes 3 fold to my mind:
1 - Whether or not the Abu Ghraib guards were orderd to torture their prisoners and if so who they were ordered to do this by (whether it was within their own chain of command or from ‘civilian’ contractors working as interrogators in the prison) which to my mind hasn’t been proved in a court of law yet,
2 - If the soldiers at Abu Ghraib knew the order was illegal? US soldiers, of ANY rank, are legally obligated to not follow orders they know to be illegal as well as report them up the chain of command. We’re all taught this in basic training - we get trained in the Geneva Conventions and Laws of Armed Combat to this effect. If they had the appropriate GC and LOAC training, then they should have definitely known better and their penalty should have been steeper regardless of whether someone superior to them ordered this or not. If they weren’t trained in GC and LOAC, they were still culpable although somewhat less so, and finally:
3 - Who else, at any rank, knew about the abuses in the prison. They should all be punished, unless they can prove that they were the ones who turned in the perpetrators.
I like your premise, and very much hope for the ultimate culpability of the Abu Ghraib scandal to be tested by the Courts and / or Congress.
I don’t think it’s gonna happen, is all.
It’s not going to happen without evidence. Y’all are familiar with that term, right? Let’s try to base our decisions of culpability on evidence.
Oh, Monty’s quite right about command responsibilities, and I didn’t mean to imply that I disagreed with holding either the direct perpetrators or their direct superiors legally responsible. In Monty’s words, service members are not “unthinking, mindless drones” who become free from culpability -or praise- once they become part of a chain of command.
No, thank you, for belying my previously held belief that you were impervious to evidence for as long as it didn’t butress what you already believed.
Glad to have been proven wrong in that particular assessment.
Did you intend to make this as sarcastic as it sounds? I don’t see how Martin was saying at any point that the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were free from culpability or praise, but perhaps I missed it.
First, I do not know who “Martin” is.
Second, I was absolutely not going for sarcasm. I was agreeing with Monty’s assertion that US servicemen are responsible for the lawful execution of their military duties. Really. I have been a US serviceman, and, while I don’t believe this is the OP’s argument, I can see how one could perceive the OP as saying that our soldiers are either weak willed and poorly trained or “good Nazis” following orders. So my intent was to stand behind the idea that servicemembers are just as fully responsible for their individual actions -good or bad- as are civilians.
Since I was obviously unclear in that, I apologize for my poor communication.
Sorry, I meant Monty - conflating my threads again :smack:
Wasn’t sure you intended sarcasm, so glad I didn’t attack first. I think we agree, or at least I certainly agree with you.
Oooh get him, very Perry Mason.
Btw, that’s not my ball park, and I’m not going to play in it.
Of course there were no orders from directly up the chain of command - it’s a silly red herring that no one’s going to follow; just read the Sy Hersh article if you’re in any doubt.
Look, the lady in charge of the prison was a business consultant reservist, the guards made pizza - they didn’t cook this up one night in between delivering thin crusts with extra Pepperoni, sausage, bacon, peppers, onions, and mushrooms.
The same ideas of humiliation and torture by reference to cultural and religious mores weren’t a coincidence in Abu Gahaib, in USA dentention centres in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo, elsewhere in Iraq and all those cute 3rd pary extraordinary rendition sites - it was, and for all we know still is, US Government policy.
But sure, the Sec of Defence didn’t okay this policy via email or Powerpoint slides via the uniformed army command structure.
The premise is that someone, somewhere, ordered a change to the Army manual for interrogations. You can’t do that without a piece of paper somewhere saying ‘do it this way’. Maybe not email or a PPT deck, but the order (if there is one) does exist somewhere detailing what is and what isn’t allowed.
We have levels to hide behind. Blackwater, C.I.A. ,regular guards.Iraqi guards ,all part of the questioning . Who is responsible,Rummy. he was in charge and allowed it to happen. Gonzalez for trying to find a legal excuse. Bush for calling these people part of the axis of terror. and therefore less than human Our legal system for extraordinary rendition. We got plenty to go around.
Agreed, but we need evidence or it’s just meaningless ranting. That’s what I’m seeking to try to find.
I was aware that the guards had been ordered to ‘soften them up’, which I consider disgraceful, but apart from that believed that it was more of a photographic shoot than reality.
I’ve a firm view that torture of prisoners is pointless, and that only idiots or sadists would indulge in it. If I were American I would insist on permanent neutral Red Cross observers in all ‘military’ prisons.