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Regarding Major General Taguba's report, Hersh (2004:1) states:
Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community...(The various abused listed in the report included).. Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
Given the foregoing, the key psychological question that must be asked is: What factors might lead a collective of essentially non-psychopathological soldiers and intelligence personnel to engage in this type of seriously abusive behavior? Social psychology research into abusive behavior just may provide an answer in terms of findings from experiments on obedience, authority, confinement and prison situations. The next section of the paper examines the literature on abuse, authority and obedience.
According to Blass (1999: 955-978), deviant behaviors such as the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison can, at least in part, be explained by the power of authority and an extreme willingness on the part of society to obey an authority figure. This explanation can be derived from the findings of a series of experiments conducted by ...