While looking at these torture photos I can't help but wonder what kind of animal could do this and

[BigBearJohn]

live with themselves?

I mean, seriously. Could YOU torture somebody if ORDERED to do so?
I sure couldn't.

The inhumanity is staggering. And I naively thought it was over with Germany.

I am ashamed. So ashamed.

[hfojvt]

1. sorry, this has been tested, that apparently most people can

In the experiment, people who had volunteered gave harsh electric shocks to another volunteer who begged them to stop. That was in a setting with no compulsion, like the need to keep your job, or the need to avoid being court-martialed. And most people did it when assured by an authority that they should.

Second, there is the whole battlefield experience. You say, right now, that you would never torture. But suppose you spent six months watching your friends and local children getting blown up by terrorist bombs and here you have in custody one of the terrorists and you want to get information to stop future bombing. Are you gonna say the same thing?

Given human nature, I think it would take a fair amount of discipline to keep somebody in a group from doing at least some torture. As in "Dances with Wolves" where the Tenante shot at one of his own men and yelled "Spivey! You bash that prisoner one more time and I am gonna put those shackles on you!"

Spivey, of course, promply kicked the prisoner again once the Lt. turned away.

[napi21]

3. I can understand anyone after seeing their buddies brutalized and

killed could easily torture someone. I KNOW I could!

I've never been in the military, but I was dating a cop for a while. He worked in a very calm area of Pittsburgh, and the worst thing he ever encountered were domestics. One night, he was shot at in a confrontation at a motel. The feelings I had that night certainly would have enabled me to torture and kill the idiot who was trying to kill my friend!

Many times I;ve said I could never kill somebody to save my own ass, but if you try to harm my husband, my kids, or my doggies, you're a dead man!

[cali]

5. you're referring to the Milgram experiment and you're dead on

it is fundamental that people don't know what they'd do under certain circumstances and it's vital to recognize that. People who swear that they'd never do x, y or z, are simply not self-aware. I don't like to think I could every do anything horrible to another person, but I can't know that.

[DrDan]

8. sure - but . . .

those pictures suggest to me that they really enjoyed it. It went beyond just whether they did it or not. Of course they did - for whatever reason.

But . . . . looking at those faces (the torturers), they were enjoying it.

That is a different issue.

[pnorman]

6. "Obedience To Authority"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram

pnorman

[DrDan]

7. seems to me there is a difference . . .

the faces of the torturers seems to suggest to me that they are truly "enjoying" it. Some pictures are more like vacation snapshots. Big Smiles. Pride. Just . . . having a good time.

When I saw those pics, I did not think - they are just following orders. My thought was that they truly enjoyed those "activities".

I agree with the OP. I just cannot understand anyone who could voluntarily perform those acts on another.

To me - just insanity. Temporary, perhaps. But they are/were insane.

[magellan]

2. I couldn't. But I know plenty who could and would take great satisfaction in it

Yes, we used to call them Nazis. I don't know what we call them now, but it's a great failure of this country that most of them are Americans.

[The Bakery Wagon]

4. agreed

How many bin ladens have our actions created? Only time will tell...

But this type of discussion will never enter the national media discourse (Kucinich painted as a freak alien conspiracy theorist), because at the top, the elite believe that it is our job to rule the world, and extract resources and wealth from wherever and from whomever they deem worthy. "We" (not me and perhaps not you) aren't ever leaving Iraq, "we" stole it fair and square (...) just like "we" aren't ever leaving Kosovo, which was also a war based upon lies, and Afghanistan will be a problem until "we" have multiple bases there. The people that don't suffer election (the power behind the throne) are already planning the next "theater" of conquest, and it will be carried out regardless of what letter the Leader (used to be representative) wears behind their name. Rome again.

800 billion/yr for "defense" and the people just keep buying the lie. 800+ bases around the world. And "terrorists" in Afghanistan/Pakistan are the unfortunate targets of the year. There's always next year though, and since 1941 America seems to need a bogeyman to survive, so life (or not) goes on, and on, and on...

the people deserve what they get.