Interesting Abu Ghraib commentary
When you put that set of horrendous work conditions and external factors together, it creates an evil barrel. You could put virtually anybody in it and you're going to get this kind of evil behavior. The Pentagon and the military say that the Abu Ghraib scandal is the result of a few bad apples in an otherwise good barrel. That's the dispositional analysis. The social psychologist in me, and the consensus among many of my colleagues in experimental social psychology, says that's the wrong analysis. It's not the bad apples, it's the bad barrels that corrupt good people. Understanding the abuses at this Iraqi prison starts with an analysis of both the situational and systematic forces operating on those soldiers working the night shift in that 'little shop of horrors.'
YOU CAN'T BE A SWEET CUCUMBER IN A VINEGAR BARREL
A Talk with Philip Zimbardo
Zimbardo is basicly making the point that the soldiers in Abu Ghraib where put in an impossible situation themselves. They where vastly over worked, living in conditions only slightly better then the prisoners, and told to soften the prisoners up. In such a situation, the vast majority of people would begin to abuse the prisoners.
This doesn't excuse their behavior at all, they still deserve to be court martialed. But I do think it plays into the excessive penalties being brought against them. The gaurds are being hit hard to avoid having to charge anybody further up the chain, and it is those people that are ultimatly the most responsible.
Jay