The Ghost Of Abu Ghraib Analysis

In short, the movie The Ghost of Abu Ghraib is about military police becoming prison guards for the Abu Ghraib prison. They had to watch hundreds of detainees at once, which could have been very dangerous if they came together to attack the guards. There was some torture at this time, but things really started to get worst when military intelligence took control over the military police. The interrogation tactics became harsher and the military police were forced to become more involved in the interrogation processes. They were told to do whatever they had to do to keep the detainees awake at night, have them naked most of the time, put them in stressor positions, anything to get information out of them. The military police didn’t necessarily agree with everything intelligence was telling them to do, but they did it any ways because they had too, it

was their job. Eventually it came to the point where the military police thought of the violent abusing of detainees to be normal. They had to change their mind sets otherwise they would go crazy. The military police were told that the detainees in the prison were the worst of the worst and getting information out of them would save many American lives. However, the policies on what type of abuse and how much abuses were legal kept changing. Nothing was ever clear to the military police of what they were and weren’t allowed to do. Many pictures were taken of the abuses. One of the military police officers who has nothing to do with the prison or anything that happened in the prison, ended up getting the pictures from one of the top intelligence guys. He knew nothing about the abuses until he saw the pictures and reported them right away. Immediately an investigation was started and the people involved were punished one way or another.
Groupthink is, “a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment resulting from pressures within the group” (Nelson, Quick).

Groupthink relates to the movie The Ghost of Abu Ghraib because Military Intelligence were a cohesive group, so what one did they all did. Even though most of the Military Police didn’t believe what they were doing to the detainees were humanely correct, they did it anyways because their higher rank told them to do it. If they were telling them to do these violent acts, then they must have been okay in doing. Intelligence wanted the information quickly and this was one of the reason why they interrogated the detainees. The military police were angry and everyone wanted answers. The higher ranked intelligence guys thought abuse was the way to get the answers they needed and quickly. The textbook, ORGB, mentions illusions of invulnerability, which is when group members feel that they are above criticism, leading to risk taking. One of the top intelligence guys, Corporal Graner, was hungry for the power. Abusing the detainees made he feel powerful, so he did it more and

more.
This also ties into escalation of commitment which is, “The tendency to continue to support a failing course of action” (Nelson, Quick). The power felt good so Graner kept doing what he was doing, even though it was wrong, he saw nothing wrong with it. The polices also kept changing which supports the escalation of commitment. The policies went from being that torture, humiliation, and degrading treatment of detainees are prohibited, to allowing them to do various things that went against those original policies. One reason why escalation of commitment occurs is because of cognitive dissonance; when a person experiences conflict between attitude and behavior. This occurred with the military police that were placed under the control of intelligence. All of them did not agree with what they were having to do to the detainees but they did it because they had too. They had to adapt themselves to the situation and tell themselves that what they were doing was normal and that they were supposed to be doing it. Some of them considered saying something but nothing serious ever happened, higher authorities that knew just ignored what was being told to them.
Loss of Individuality is, “A social process in which individual group members lose self awareness and its accompanying sense of accountability, inhibition, and the responsibility for individual behavior” (Nelson, Quick). There was so much torture and so much violence that happened in the prison everyday that the military police saw it as an everyday normal activity. They had lost their sense of self worth. The one speaker in the movie showed pictures of herself with naked detainees with her smiling and a thumbs up. Another photo she was with a dead detainee, who was said to of had a heart attack but was actually murdered, and she was smiling with a thumbs up there too. She said she didn’t know why she did those things at the time. The way the movie talked it sounded like Graner encouraged her to be in the photos. Another speaker from the movie, one of the police men, said that when he was in the prison he was a different man. He did what he was told, whether he agreed or not, and eventually made himself believe that it was normal to be doing that everyday. Looking back on it he said he wouldn’t wish it upon his worst enemy. That saying says a lot about how horrible and scaring the situation was being in the prison.
Leadership is, “The process of guiding and directing the behavior of people in the work environment” (Nelson, Quick). Leadership was shown throughout the whole movie. One example is when one of the military police offered to be a shooter in a helicopter, he asked what the rules of contact were and basically they said to shoot whatever looks like the enemy. That’s bad leadership skills because if you’re in a foreign country, everything is going to look like the enemy and you could potentially kill a lot of innocent people. Another example is when General Millers was switched from Cuba to Abu Ghraib because he was so “good” at what he does. He had told authorities that the interrogation tactics on detainees were not enough, because they still weren’t talking or giving any helpful information. So, Secretary Rumsfeld approved documents for harsher interrogation tactics. Upon approving one of these documents he had made a comment about how he stands for 8-10 hours a day and he doesn’t understand why the detainees would only have to stand for 4 hours. This basically told the generals that they could do whatever they needed to do to the detainees in order to get the information needed. The military police under control of military intelligence, did whatever they were told, even knowing that it was wrong to some extent, they didn’t ask questions, they just did what they were told and went about their day.