GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB. Who are the Ghosts of Abu Ghraib? From watching some segments of this powerful documentary on HBO (which I saw as a guest at an ACLU screening last week), you might think that the ghosts are evil spirits that haunted the compound after years of brutality there under Saddam Hussein. It's almost as if the US-led forces who took over Abu Ghraib were possessed as they perpetuated the brutal practices they were officially there to eliminate. How else can one explain how the American soldiers interviewed in this film--many of them young, fresh-faced, and seemingly decent human beings--engaged in and casually photographed cruelties that now appall them? As one MP puts it in the film, "That place turned me into a monster."

Yet documentarian Rory Kennedy doesn't rely on supernatural explanations. She frames her movie with footage of the notorious Milgram experiment in which ordinary American men complied with authority figures who urged them to inflict electric shocks on screaming subjects. It can't be an accident that this experiment took shape around the same time that Hannah Arendt's concept of "the banality of evil" took shape around the Eichmann trial in Israel.

It might be comforting to think that evil acts can only be perpetrated by the equivalent of a villain with a black top hat and a curly moustache--I mean, someone who just looks evil, dude--but the truth is that under some circumstances all sorts of people can and do commit dastardly deeds regardless of how they might come across to the world under other circumstances. And it strikes me that military and law enforcement hierachies encourage compliance even more than a lab situation would--especially when (as Ghosts of Abu Ghraib points out) authorities (in this case, the likes of George Bush, Alberto Gonzales, and Donald Rumsfeld) overturn conventions of proper conduct that can keep some ordinary soldiers and government agents from going over the edge.

In Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, one can see the faces and hear the voices of ordinary soldiers who have gone over the edge--they agreed to cooperate with Kennedy. One can also see footage of some of the high-level figures whose policy-making helped to make their compliance possible, but who tend to double-talk their way out of accepting their share of responsibility.

One of the most jarring moments in the film--an example of "damning with high praise" or perhaps "betrayal with a kiss"--comes when Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense, very publicly lauds Sergeant Joseph Darby for exposing the American misdeeds at Abu Ghraib--even though whistleblower Darby had been "guaranteed" confidentiality. In the aftermath of this "Scooter moment" (it looks like Rumsfeld, who was highly implicated in approving or condoning abuses, tried to "get" Darby the way Libby tried to "get" Valerie Plame), Darby and his family felt it necessary to enter protective military custody to avoid acts of retaliation.

Investigations into the Abu Ghraib abuses focused on lower-level soldiers up to now-demoted Brigadier General Janis Karpinski but didn't expose the chain of command between the soldiers and the administration officials, as well as any "parallel" chains of commands having to do with "independent contractors" and certain shadowy government operatives. During the post-screening discussion, Rory Kennedy said that she had names but that she could not include them in the film due to legal restrictions. Those names strike me as representing the real-life "ghosts" of Abu Ghraib--the individuals who have so far evaded justice. But perhaps the work of agencies such as the ACLU and Human Rights First will shed more light on those figures and help the United States restore standards of conduct.

In the meantime, here are a couple of questions: Are Americans numb to the realities of torture? Have media portrayals of torture contributed toward this numbness? Human Rights First is trying to address these issues through its Primetime Torture Project. New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, Jill Savitt of Human Rights First, and former U.S. Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis will participate on a panel on "24: Torture Televised" at the NYU School of Law (Lipton Hall, 108 W. 3rd Street between Sullivan and MacDougal) on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 from 6 to 8 pm.

Here's Kennedy talking about Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.



Source (3:01)


And here's some YouTube video about the Milgram experiment.



Source (6:58)