Abu Ghraib Explained

Emmanuel Saint Jean

Charlotte Ryan
Social Psychology 552
12/7/2010

The horrible scenes brought to light by photographs in 2004, depict one of America’s
most horrible “mistakes”, along with one of the worst cases in abuse and misconduct in the
workplace ever heard of in the new century. One would think that such atrocities that disgrace
the face of humanity would not find itself in a Prison run by the United States of America. Many
factors went into what happened at Abu Ghraib, poor leadership, lack of regulation and
unprepared military personal, a lack of discipline to handle responsibility, many of these sound
much like excuses, most are. The most disturbing discovery is that psychologists on board Abu
Ghraib were not able to foresee the actions happening in the absence of leadership, and how the
human potential can alter it’s characteristics to another role under the right circumstances.
Personnel stationed at the facility stated that leading officer Brigadier General Janis
Karpinski argued with another high ranking officer, Colonel Thomas Pappas over who was
command at Abu Ghraib, leaving military personnel with a vague and dubious association
issue’s regarding or concerning leadership. [ CITATION Pau08 \l 1033 ] Although the two leaders
argued heavily both leaders kept distance from mission activities. Personnel failed to actively see
who was in charge. Because of time factors regarding constructing and building of the prison the
staff chosen to work at Abu Ghraib was trained hastily, so hastily that they lacked total overall
discipline. Many of them were not even trained on handling prisoners at all. Evidence of this
shows up on logs and records all over the facility, with many of the logs being unclear, vague,
and highly unprofessional. In fact the logs were done so casually that they are not worthy of
military quality. Rules belonging to the Geneva convention were also not enforced and many
times never mentioned.
Poor leadership skills may have created the scenario, but other variables still may have
impacted the end result. Numerous reports and allegations state that Doctors of all sorts working
at the facility in Iraq failed to report abusive behavior though they are legally required to do so.
but much more disturbing is that on staff psychologist failed to identify a very dangerous
scenario. Psychological experiments such as the famous Stanford prison experiment show how
quickly human behavior changes based on assigned roles and circumstances. At Abu Ghraib
prison facility, the circumstances were similar yet psychologist failed to recognize the Stanford
prison experiment in which regular college students became prisoners/jailed convicts and
suffered large personality alteration. Although one may forget the specific experiment, there are
hundreds of other similar experiments which demonstrate the how susceptible humans are to
committing acts brutality and violence under the right circumstances In short the monstrous acts
that happened could have been prevented with the proper leadership and proper identifying skills
by on board Psychologist’s.
Abu Ghraib Explained

Emmanuel Saint Jean

Charlotte Ryan
Social Psychology 552
12/7/2010

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165-193.

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1 , 46-54.

Wolfendale, J. (2006). Stoic Warriors and Stoic Torturers:

The Moral Psychology of Military Torture. STOTIC Warriors , 62-76.

Abu Ghraib Explained

Emmanuel Saint Jean

Charlotte Ryan
Social Psychology 552
12/7/2010

My work ethic was good; I lost hold of time but stayed on track for the most part. I
researched on my own as did Charlotte besides our rendezvous on October 11th. I do recall one
time not being able to complete an action plan, so Charlotte took care of it and reviewed the
terms with me like a good partner. I met with Charlotte at the requested times and did what ever
portion assigned to me. I believe I effectively carried out my portion of the project. I researched
and typed my own paper. Throughout the semester we were both responsible for submitting
action plan’s and annotated bibliographies and we alternated the responsibility.