Steve Robinson agrees that waging war "by the rules" is a difficult concept to grasp.
The former Army Ranger was schooled in the art of interrogation, learning how to elicit information from prisoners of war without violating the Geneva Convention or the military code of conduct.
He also learned how to bend those rules, learning techniques the enemy might use to interrogate him.
"For the average civilian, the image of having rules in war is mind-boggling," said Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group for veterans of the gulf wars.
"The ultimate irony is that war is about killing and it's OK to kill the enemy, but not humiliate them."
For Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities, the abuses some have suffered at the hands of their American captors -- depicted in graphic photographs -- may indeed be considered a fate worse than death.
"It went to the root of their religion, females looking at naked men," Robinson said. "It's the most terrible thing they could have done in attacking their culture."
President Bush has called the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners "un-American" and an aberration.
The overwhelming majority of soldiers do not commit abuses or atrocities. But a few will cross the line of human decency in any war or conflict, with the abuse of prisoners and atrocities against civilians as tragic consequences.
In the United States, people will not soon forget the recent images of slain American soldiers and civilian contractors being dragged through the streets or hanging from a bridge in Fallujah after they were killed by Iraqi insurgents.
On Tuesday, an Islamic militant Web site posted a video showing the beheading of American civilian Nicholas Berg. The militants said the slaying was retribution for the American soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Wartime atrocities are nothing new.
The Bataan Death March during World War II killed almost 10,000 American and Filipino prisoners. Japanese soldiers systematically beat and executed the prisoners during a 55-mile hike to a prison camp in sweltering heat with little food or water.
The Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6 million Jews, is one of the most horrific examples of mankind's inhumanity.
And history shows that the U.S. military has violated the rules of war as well.
In the latter stages of the Civil War, almost 13,000 Union prisoners died of starvation, disease and exposure while being held in squalid conditions at the Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Ga.
In recent years, the American public learned about the massacre at the No Gun Ri bridge, where American troops and pilots killed upward of 300 South Koreans -- mostly women and children -- in the summer of 1950.
In 1968, American soldiers killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre.
And in a previously unreported case, according to a former officer who served in Vietnam and wished to remain anonymous, American troops mutilated the corpses of North Vietnamese soldiers on at least one occasion.
This month, The Washington Post reported that the Defense Department had approved 20 harsh techniques involving physically and psychologically stressful interrogation of terrorism suspects held at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The International Red Cross says that the United States ignored its reports of prisoner abuse in Iraq dating to October and acted only when The New Yorker magazine published the infamous photographs.
"We're not robots, and people will break down and do bad things," said Samuel Watson, like Robinson a former Army Ranger. Now an associate professor of public health at the University of Pittsburgh, Watson specializes in emergency readiness.
Recognizing the propensity for abuse, the U.S. military tries to minimize it and to recognize circumstances that may contribute to abhorrent behavior. That's why some observers doubt that the abuses in Iraq involved only a few individuals acting independently. The responsibility goes much higher, some analysts say.
"Either they weren't trained, supervised or led properly, or something about the way they were raised in the military or at home makes them think it's OK. They should have known," Watson said.
Robinson, who often communicates electronically with soldiers on patrol in Iraq, said that morale is low among American troops whose stay has been extended because of the Iraqi insurgency. Many are reservists or National Guard members, citizen soldiers accustomed to being weekend warriors.
Exacerbating the situation, not everyone working in the prison system is adequately trained, Robinson said. He has been told that tank drivers have been brought in to assist the military police.
"You can't ask a guy off the street to do this," said Robinson, who attended Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion School. "There's lots of training. You can lose valuable intelligence by using the wrong technique."
And whether the guards were encouraged by higher-ups or acted on their own, the environment -- tension, frustration, anger and fear -- may have helped inflame the situation.
"By its very nature, the prison situation is the most enormous power differential in society," said Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University. "Guards sense they can do anything they want, especially if there is no oversight from their superiors."
Zimbardo has firsthand knowledge about how a prison system can bring out the worst in people. In 1971, he conducted a study using student volunteers at Stanford who were randomly chosen to play the roles of prisoners or guards.
The experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after six days because the student "guards" engaged in abusive and humiliating behavior.
Yet all the participants were considered to be well-adjusted.
"There was an element of creative evil that I saw in my students, and some of the ideas came from women," Zimbardo said.
He said that the same kind of group dynamic might be partly responsible for the abuses in Iraq, with prison guards making up the rules as they go along.
"I think there is a progression, each day an escalation, and what we've seen in the pictures is the middle time period, more like fraternity hazing. They are simulating terrible things, but the next step would be going from simulating to reality: sodomy or rape."
Because they are the enemy, prisoners of war are more susceptible to dehumanizing treatment. "It's easier to do terrible things to them if you treat them like animals, less than human," Zimbardo said.
"Maybe it's revenge for a buddy killed or maimed in Iraq. Maybe it's payback for what the terrorists did on 9-11."
The predicament is that the sweeps made by military patrols to root out insurgents also net Iraqi civilians who may have no links to the insurgents or terrorists. "It's not easily apparent who the enemy is," Watson said. "Insurgents are not wearing uniforms. They're mixing with the civilian population."
That is part of the difference between war and terrorism, he said.
The rules of war become somewhat blurred because terrorists owe their allegiance to a cause, not necessarily a country.
The war on terrorism is not conventional. "It's like the British against us in the Revolutionary War," Zimbardo said. "They lined up, kneeled down; we hid. We learned from the Indians."
But for many Americans, modern-day terrorists and Iraqi insurgents are not "fighting fair." Thus, some Americans may be in sympathy with the harsh treatment of some Iraqi prisoners, equating them with al Qaeda members and the 9-11 terrorists.
As Robinson said, the prisoner abuse exposes the cultural divide between Westerners and the Arab world. Manochehr Dorraj, who teaches political science at Texas Christian University and specializes in Middle East affairs, said Arabs will view the photos of abuse as "America's intent to humiliate Arabs and Muslims."
"Let's face it, Saddam's regime engaged in atrocities much worse, killing people en masse; but in public-relations terms, this was a horrible move, and we have to come to terms with the fallout," Dorraj said.
"It will be doubly difficult for us to have some semblance of legitimacy, and the handpicked government entity we chose won't enjoy legitimacy. We have lost our moral clout and credibility."
Dorraj said he believes that the humiliation was orchestrated to break the Iraqi prisoners. "If the probe goes to the bottom of this, we'll find someone high in the command was part of the plan," he said. "It's why these soldiers acted with impunity; they were thinking they'd be protected."
Including female soldiers in the prison guard contingent showed total disregard for cultural differences, Dorraj said.
"That part of the world is much more conservative. You don't bring a female soldier next to a man. And it promotes American females in a light that doesn't really represent them," he said.
Dorraj and Robinson said the damage done by the prison abuses may take decades to repair.
Zimbardo added that the consequences for those involved will be more immediate.
The photos will condemn the Iraqi prisoners to a life of shame, he said, "a living death."
The U.S. soldiers who were involved will also carry the stigma the rest of their lives, even if they are not prosecuted, he said.
But he cautioned Americans against dismissing the abusive soldiers as a few bad apples.
"The majority of people will obey and conform to the rules in a new situation," Zimbardo said. "But we need to ask ourselves, 'Are there any conditions under which I would have done this?'
"The line between good and evil is not out there somewhere; it's in your heart."
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/8647440.htm?1c
The former Army Ranger was schooled in the art of interrogation, learning how to elicit information from prisoners of war without violating the Geneva Convention or the military code of conduct.
He also learned how to bend those rules, learning techniques the enemy might use to interrogate him.
"For the average civilian, the image of having rules in war is mind-boggling," said Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group for veterans of the gulf wars.
"The ultimate irony is that war is about killing and it's OK to kill the enemy, but not humiliate them."
For Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities, the abuses some have suffered at the hands of their American captors -- depicted in graphic photographs -- may indeed be considered a fate worse than death.
"It went to the root of their religion, females looking at naked men," Robinson said. "It's the most terrible thing they could have done in attacking their culture."
President Bush has called the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners "un-American" and an aberration.
The overwhelming majority of soldiers do not commit abuses or atrocities. But a few will cross the line of human decency in any war or conflict, with the abuse of prisoners and atrocities against civilians as tragic consequences.
In the United States, people will not soon forget the recent images of slain American soldiers and civilian contractors being dragged through the streets or hanging from a bridge in Fallujah after they were killed by Iraqi insurgents.
On Tuesday, an Islamic militant Web site posted a video showing the beheading of American civilian Nicholas Berg. The militants said the slaying was retribution for the American soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Wartime atrocities are nothing new.
The Bataan Death March during World War II killed almost 10,000 American and Filipino prisoners. Japanese soldiers systematically beat and executed the prisoners during a 55-mile hike to a prison camp in sweltering heat with little food or water.
The Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6 million Jews, is one of the most horrific examples of mankind's inhumanity.
And history shows that the U.S. military has violated the rules of war as well.
In the latter stages of the Civil War, almost 13,000 Union prisoners died of starvation, disease and exposure while being held in squalid conditions at the Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Ga.
In recent years, the American public learned about the massacre at the No Gun Ri bridge, where American troops and pilots killed upward of 300 South Koreans -- mostly women and children -- in the summer of 1950.
In 1968, American soldiers killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre.
And in a previously unreported case, according to a former officer who served in Vietnam and wished to remain anonymous, American troops mutilated the corpses of North Vietnamese soldiers on at least one occasion.
This month, The Washington Post reported that the Defense Department had approved 20 harsh techniques involving physically and psychologically stressful interrogation of terrorism suspects held at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The International Red Cross says that the United States ignored its reports of prisoner abuse in Iraq dating to October and acted only when The New Yorker magazine published the infamous photographs.
"We're not robots, and people will break down and do bad things," said Samuel Watson, like Robinson a former Army Ranger. Now an associate professor of public health at the University of Pittsburgh, Watson specializes in emergency readiness.
Recognizing the propensity for abuse, the U.S. military tries to minimize it and to recognize circumstances that may contribute to abhorrent behavior. That's why some observers doubt that the abuses in Iraq involved only a few individuals acting independently. The responsibility goes much higher, some analysts say.
"Either they weren't trained, supervised or led properly, or something about the way they were raised in the military or at home makes them think it's OK. They should have known," Watson said.
Robinson, who often communicates electronically with soldiers on patrol in Iraq, said that morale is low among American troops whose stay has been extended because of the Iraqi insurgency. Many are reservists or National Guard members, citizen soldiers accustomed to being weekend warriors.
Exacerbating the situation, not everyone working in the prison system is adequately trained, Robinson said. He has been told that tank drivers have been brought in to assist the military police.
"You can't ask a guy off the street to do this," said Robinson, who attended Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion School. "There's lots of training. You can lose valuable intelligence by using the wrong technique."
And whether the guards were encouraged by higher-ups or acted on their own, the environment -- tension, frustration, anger and fear -- may have helped inflame the situation.
"By its very nature, the prison situation is the most enormous power differential in society," said Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University. "Guards sense they can do anything they want, especially if there is no oversight from their superiors."
Zimbardo has firsthand knowledge about how a prison system can bring out the worst in people. In 1971, he conducted a study using student volunteers at Stanford who were randomly chosen to play the roles of prisoners or guards.
The experiment was to last two weeks but was terminated after six days because the student "guards" engaged in abusive and humiliating behavior.
Yet all the participants were considered to be well-adjusted.
"There was an element of creative evil that I saw in my students, and some of the ideas came from women," Zimbardo said.
He said that the same kind of group dynamic might be partly responsible for the abuses in Iraq, with prison guards making up the rules as they go along.
"I think there is a progression, each day an escalation, and what we've seen in the pictures is the middle time period, more like fraternity hazing. They are simulating terrible things, but the next step would be going from simulating to reality: sodomy or rape."
Because they are the enemy, prisoners of war are more susceptible to dehumanizing treatment. "It's easier to do terrible things to them if you treat them like animals, less than human," Zimbardo said.
"Maybe it's revenge for a buddy killed or maimed in Iraq. Maybe it's payback for what the terrorists did on 9-11."
The predicament is that the sweeps made by military patrols to root out insurgents also net Iraqi civilians who may have no links to the insurgents or terrorists. "It's not easily apparent who the enemy is," Watson said. "Insurgents are not wearing uniforms. They're mixing with the civilian population."
That is part of the difference between war and terrorism, he said.
The rules of war become somewhat blurred because terrorists owe their allegiance to a cause, not necessarily a country.
The war on terrorism is not conventional. "It's like the British against us in the Revolutionary War," Zimbardo said. "They lined up, kneeled down; we hid. We learned from the Indians."
But for many Americans, modern-day terrorists and Iraqi insurgents are not "fighting fair." Thus, some Americans may be in sympathy with the harsh treatment of some Iraqi prisoners, equating them with al Qaeda members and the 9-11 terrorists.
As Robinson said, the prisoner abuse exposes the cultural divide between Westerners and the Arab world. Manochehr Dorraj, who teaches political science at Texas Christian University and specializes in Middle East affairs, said Arabs will view the photos of abuse as "America's intent to humiliate Arabs and Muslims."
"Let's face it, Saddam's regime engaged in atrocities much worse, killing people en masse; but in public-relations terms, this was a horrible move, and we have to come to terms with the fallout," Dorraj said.
"It will be doubly difficult for us to have some semblance of legitimacy, and the handpicked government entity we chose won't enjoy legitimacy. We have lost our moral clout and credibility."
Dorraj said he believes that the humiliation was orchestrated to break the Iraqi prisoners. "If the probe goes to the bottom of this, we'll find someone high in the command was part of the plan," he said. "It's why these soldiers acted with impunity; they were thinking they'd be protected."
Including female soldiers in the prison guard contingent showed total disregard for cultural differences, Dorraj said.
"That part of the world is much more conservative. You don't bring a female soldier next to a man. And it promotes American females in a light that doesn't really represent them," he said.
Dorraj and Robinson said the damage done by the prison abuses may take decades to repair.
Zimbardo added that the consequences for those involved will be more immediate.
The photos will condemn the Iraqi prisoners to a life of shame, he said, "a living death."
The U.S. soldiers who were involved will also carry the stigma the rest of their lives, even if they are not prosecuted, he said.
But he cautioned Americans against dismissing the abusive soldiers as a few bad apples.
"The majority of people will obey and conform to the rules in a new situation," Zimbardo said. "But we need to ask ourselves, 'Are there any conditions under which I would have done this?'
"The line between good and evil is not out there somewhere; it's in your heart."
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/8647440.htm?1c
