Studio 360

What wonderful, probing, and deep questioning; would we as individuals and as a nation do more of that.

why is it, that when discussing Abu Ghraib, there is no mention of the fact that all of these inmates walked home?

and there is not mention, or nobody pays attention to:

1) the American contractors that were killed and whose bodies were burned

2) the American journalist that was beheaded, and whose execution was publicized on television

3) the thousands of Iraqi bodies that have been discovered who appear to have been executed.

These people did not get to walk home as did the Abu Ghraib inmates, but for some reason these stories are ignored. Why is that?

Even more disturbing to me as the images of and the actual abuse of adult male prisoners at Abu Graib is the fact the women and their children were interned at the prison. At least some of the women were not suspected of any crimes - rather, they and their children were imprisoned as bargaining chips for the US in tracking down the womens'husbands, men wanted by the US. Not only is this type of imprisonment contrary to international law (I believe),but what we fail to note in any coverage of the US invasion is that the Iraqis have the right to resist foreign occupation. To imprison the wives and children of men who were merely exercising their right to resist seems barbaric to me.

Much of today's program resonated with me as a listener. I have been transfixed by the images and stories from Abu Garaib. I worked in security in a maximum security prison for 10 years and when I first saw the photos I knew intuitively that the situation was endemic and systemic. That rather than being the result of a handful of renegade, amoral MPs - this was the result of deliberately mixing intelligence gathering with maintainence of security - either directly or indirectly engineered by top officials (those in power at a level clearly higher then Janice Karpinski - a heroic figure in my opinion.)

I am grieved by the pain and suffering this has caused not only the Iraqi victims of this recklessness but the US soldiers who will, I believe from my own experience "inside", be long-term victims of their own consciences.

Thank you for this program.

I take issue when a narrator speaks for people she doesn't know. The narrator stated that most Americans are resigned to torture. I think that's a generalization that actually needs to be researched, specifically (with numbers not words), before it can be stated, especially when it is referring to a documentary about the torture of Iraqis by Americans. I find this comment insulting, and used only to create sensationalism within the context of the story. I have yet to come across anyone in America on either side of the war fence who agrees or is resigned to the torture of another. So, as an American, I don't like anyone speaking for me, and if this statement is true, give me proof.

Dear Denise,

Fairly or not, when the US government sanctions torture, and American citizens are not out protesting en masse, as is our right, then it is reasonable to assume that the majority of us are literally "resigned" to it.

I have not protested my government's actions, which do not represent the enlightenment ideals on which this nation was founded. That does not mean that I am pro-torture. It means that I am RESIGNED to the reality that there is little I can do to change it except to wait for the general election to throw these incompetent buffoons out of office. How have you shown your lack of resignation over our great nation's involvement in torture?

For all of the outrage about Abu Ghraib -- and without question, it is justified--why do I never hear about the atocities on the other side that may drive some people to lose moral and physical control.

What about the monsters who behead innocent journalists and others caught in between, and then parade their heads around on TV and on videos. What about the animals who kill innocent contractors, drag their bodies through the street, then immolate then to the cheers of barbarian spectators?

These young kids who performed the dispicable acts in Abu Garaib did not arrive in Iraq predisposed to do these kinds of things. They became angry beyond rationality because of their situation. This does not exculpate them, it's merely what happend.

In all of our self-introspection about how Americans became unhinged, please be more thoughtful when it comes to portraying the events that that precipitated this behavior

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I think Morris' documentary is in itself a sad commentary on the state of self-imposed ignorance and naivete of this whole nation. What ARE the idiots who think that these soldiers in the photos are "monsters"? The explosion of studies after WWII on the Nazi and the holocaust that have produced a vast vast body of wisdom and knowledge on just what kind of creatures human beings are have apparnelty made no dent in reducing widespread illusions on the matter. Why in the world should we think of American as so saintly as to be incapable of the most nefarious? Who are we kidding? Ourselves? Apparently, we have been fooled, by ourselves no less, into thinking just such a baseless and utterly laughable thought. It is only against the hediously false assumption that Americans have somehow as a nation collectively graduated to the plateau of moral virtues that Morris' documentary and others like it can seem to even have a rationale. We are so good at asking dim-witted questions like "how could they have done it" only because we are ourselves so atrociously simple-minded and imganation-deprived, a result that one cannot help suspect can largely be attributed to the forces of anti-intellectualism in this country. A nation that devotes itself to material consumption and relentless sensory stimulation cannot, in fairness, be expected to remain sharp on matters that require both historical knowledge and critical thinking.

I'm sorry, Bryan Miller, but maybe you should see the film first? The reason it's called "Standard Operating Procedure" is NOT, as you posit, because the "kids" just "became angry beyond rationality because of their situation" or were upset by images of beheadings. No, it's because they were fulfilling, yes, STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE.

Abu Ghraib wasn't personal. It was policy. And it needs to be investigated. And stopped. Torture is not a winning policy.

A contributor to the story said the ICONIC PICTURE of the war has to be the man standing on the box holding wires. I couldn't disagree more. I believe that title should be given to the picture and video of Nick Berg screaming for his life just before his head was sawed off.

Just to be clear I am not a person who believes in any kind of torture. I also didn't need the Abu Graib pictures to turn me against the war. I was against it from the beginning as one of this country's citizens who wouldn't be duped into blaming Iraq and Sadaam for 9/11. But I bet that Nick Berg would most likely have preferred the naked pyramid, or the dog sicced on him, or yes even standing on the box holding the wires. Let's try to keep some perspective.

The American public's reaction to Abu Ghraib is unbelievably out of touch with reality. And despite my immense respect for Studio 360, this particular episode was just so full of ignorance on the subject of wartime interrogation practices, that I had to turn it off half way.

Anybody who thinks these are worst or most iconic images to come out of the war obviously has no perspective on the day to day realities of what this war is about.

I will admit that these photos very existence represents unbelievable poor judgment and unprofessional conduct by the soldiers involved.

But denying a person of sleep, humiliating them sexually, or intimidating them psychologically is hardly torture. Similar behavior goes on every semester in American fraternity pledge hazing. This is to say nothing of the rigors of our military's training programs for their own soldiers (e.g. SERE school where soldiers are forced to endure long marches, extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation, psychological harassment).

I cannot believe that comparisons were made on this show to the Spanish Inquisition. I am pretty liberal and hardly a chauvinist... but still every time I hear people talking about the significance of Abu Ghraib, I feel like calling them "Sissys". Yes, because it becomes abundantly clear to me that such people do not recognize the harsh realities of fighting to surviving a war.

There is no such thing as a clean war. When will people recognize that this IS what America has always been about... at least when it comes to conducting a war.

Still, if you think that Iraqi prisoners today are more afraid of Americans than their own people...

Well, you'd be wrong.