By Linda S. Heard

"Everything, everything in war is barbaric...but the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being." [Ellen Key, Swedish author, critic and ideologue, 1849-1926]

Members of the American military, intelligence services and civilian contractors who tortured, humiliated and abused Iraqi prisoners in their care at Abu Ghraib, say they were following orders. Indeed, there is more and more evidence appearing in the public domain indicating that this was so. U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft, testifying before a Senate Judiciary Committee, has refused to turn over two memos prepared by Bush administration lawyers on the subject of torture and to confirm whether or not President Bush personally authorized such brutal methods.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has already admitted that the occupation authority had secretly held a prisoner in Iraq and deliberately failed to register the detainee with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Since then, reports of many more such 'ghost' detainees have emerged.

The New York based Human Rights First claims that the U.S. is holding thousands of suspects at more than two-dozen detention centres in Iraq, Cuba, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, a British island Diego Garcia and on two U.S. ships and says half of those detention facilities operate clandestinely. The secrecy surrounding the centres makes "inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely, but inevitable," states the group's recently issued report. Says the group's Director Deborah Pearlstein: "The United States government is holding prisoners in a secret system of off-shore prisons beyond the reach of adequate supervision, accountability or law."

The abuse has degenerated to the extent that on June 17 the normally reticent UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council to stop shielding American 'peacekeepers' from international prosecution for war crimes and to oppose a U.S. resolution calling for a blanket exemption. In retrospect, it is little wonder the U.S. administration adamantly refused to sign-up the International Criminal Court prior to the invasion, which flew in the face of that country's early support of the tribunal.

Yet where is the outrage from the American public? And why do more than 50 per cent of all Americans still support their administration's actions in Iraq? Surely they now know that the pretexts for the invasion - that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction and had links to Osama bin Laden - have been exposed as false by weapons inspector David Kay of the Iraq Survey Group, and the 9-11 Commission respectively?

In the days when two-thirds of all Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was directly involved with September 11, due to the numerous statements of Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney disingenuously linking the two, they could perhaps be forgiven for believing Iraq had it coming. On September 11 Bush was heard saying someone will have to pay for this, while Rumsfeld is quoted widely as saying on the same day: "There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq". It was then that the 'War on Terror' was born, a natural ideological replacement for 'the War against Communism' or the "Cold War'.

So here you have it: Iraq was not only invaded under a mendacious pretext, its people are being locked up and abused without access to family or lawyers. At the same time the country has been promised full sovereignty, a CIA man Iyad Allawi - cousin of Pentagon darling Ahmad Chalabi, wanted for bank embezzlement in Jordan and accused of being a spy for Iran - has been appointed as Prime Minister and has invited the occupying forces to stay on. The biggest American embassy in the world is being constructed and the Americans have fought to hold onto Saddam's palace as an embassy annexe. And when those Iraqis who object to living under occupation fight back, they are described as "terrorists" - a convenient word used to describe anyone who actively opposes the will of Bush and his neo-con, rightwing coterie.

So why is the aggressor - the U.S. and Britain - still being considered as upright; as holding the moral high-ground, when thousands of Iraqis, who had suffered decades of war and crippling sanctions, going around minding their own business have been killed, maimed, imprisoned, humiliated and abused?

It is the same reason Israel, the third militarily powerful country in the world, and the sole regional nuclear power currently occupying Palestinian lands and abusing an entire nation, is put on a pedestal in the U.S. The powerful with their Apache gun-ships, F16s, armoured personnel carriers, tanks, missiles, bombs and bulldozers, who have taken the lives of Palestinians in a ratio of 4:1 since September 2000, are considered by Americans, in general, as victims of the conflict. Again, when Israel fires tanks into crowded market places or drops missiles into heavily populated Palestinian areas, they are merely acting in self-defence. When Palestinian militants retaliate in any way, they are designated 'terrorists'. How does such skewed thinking occur? How do many of us end up believing just what our governments want us to? Don't we have free will and independence of thought?

Mind-control

It is all down to fear-based propaganda using the techniques of mass mind control. These are the same techniques used in World War II. Author Doris Lessing describes the process beautifully: "When I look back at the Second World War, I see something I didn't more than dimly suspect at that time. It was that everyone was crazy. I am not talking of aptitudes for killing, for destruction, which soldiers are taught as part of their training, but a kind of atmosphere, the invisible poison, which spreads everywhere. And then people everywhere began behaving, as they never could in peacetime.

"Afterwards we look back, amazed. Did I really do that? Believe that? Fall for that bit of propaganda? Think that all our enemies were evil? That all our nation's acts were good? How could I have tolerated that state of mind, day after day, month after month - perpetually stimulated, perpetually whipped up into emotions that my mind was meanwhile quietly and desperately protesting against?"

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister, became a master at his profession. He wrote: "...the rank and file [ordinary people] are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must always, therefore, be essentially simple and repetitious." And as Adolph Hitler put it: "How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."

In Mein Kampf, he put forward his "principle of the whopping lie" in regards to the gullibility of the masses. "The greater the lie, the more effective it is as a weapon," he said. He recommended telling the biggest and most unlikely lie, keep on telling it and the people will eventually think it must be the truth."

When asked towards whom the lie should be directed "toward the scientific intelligentsia or towards the uneducated masses?" he answered: "It must always and exclusively be directed towards the masses. The teach-ability of the great masses is very limited, their understanding small, and their memory short." Hitler capitalised on ignorance and apathy, which many Western leaders are doing today. He also staged parades and rallies, played up badges, emblems, uniforms, and flags, and gave emotional speeches. This was done to nurture a national identity, a national community and a national cause. Patriotism and national became merged into one. The state could do no wrong.

The technique of dehumanising the enemy was also employed. Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler said: "We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals..."

Propagandists use the repetition of emotive words such as "justice", "values", "democracy", and "freedom" to further their aims and influence public opinion. They use slogans, such as "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" (French Revolution), Peace, Bread and Land (Russian Revolution) and God Bless America. They may use a song or a flag as a rallying point, a symbol for their own belief system.

The Milgram Experiment

But let's return to the guards of Abu Ghraib prison, who grinned for the family album next to corpses, forced hooded, naked men to form a pyramid and engage in sexual acts, and who laughed as they crouched fearful of un-muzzled attack dogs. Taken out of context as individuals, they seem nice, small town girls and boys, the kind of people one might take home to mother for apple pie. Let's suppose they were following orders, as they say, what made them participate in torture so willingly and even joyously?

Doris Lessing's description of The Milgram Experment could be enlightening here: "the Milgram experiment was prompted by curiosity into how it is that ordinary decent, kindly people, like you and me, will do abominable things when ordered to do them - like the innumerable officials under the Nazis, who claimed as an excuse that they were "only obeying orders".

"The researcher put into one room people chosen at random who were told that they were taking part in an experiment. A screen divided the room in such a way that they could hear but not see into the other part. In this second part volunteers sat apparently wired up to a machine that administered electric shocks of increasing severity up to the point of death, like the electric chair.

"This machine indicated to them how they had to respond to the shocks - with grunts, then groans, then screams, then pleas that the experiment should terminate. The person in the first half of the room believed the person in the second half was, in fact, connected to the machine. He was told that his job was to administer increasingly severe shocks according to the instructions of the experimenter and to ignore the cries of pain and pleas from the other side of the screen.

"Sixty-two per-cent of the people tested continued to administer shocks up to the 450-volts level. T the 285-volt level the guinea pig had given an agonised scream and became silent. The people administering what they believed were extremely painful doses of electricity...went on doing it. Afterwards most could not believe they were capable of such behaviour. Some said: "Well...I was only carrying out instructions".

Group ethic

The group mind is another important factor to consider when deciding why those American jailors behaved in the disgusting way they did. Most of us are subject to the herd instinct and vulnerable to peer pressure. Studies have discovered that only 10 per cent of the population are leaders and decision-makers, while the rest follow. Furthermore, most of us strive to be liked by our peers. If one dominant jailer was able to convince the rest they were doing the right thing, the likelihood is that the others would put aside their own morals in favour of not rocking the boat.

Carol Travis wrote in a 1991 New York Times article: "Our nation, for all its celebration of the Lone Ranger and the independent pioneer, does not really value the individual - at least not when the person is behaving individually and standing up to the group. (We like dissenters but only when they are dissenting in Russia or China) Again and again, countless studies have shown that people will go along rather than risk the embarrassment of being disobedient, rude or disloyal.

To his personal cost, a recently acknowledged hero of the Vietnam War went against the prevailing group ethic at Mai Lai. Hugh C. Thompson Junior, a helicopter pilot, was on a recon mission over a small Vietnamese village when he saw U.S. soldiers standing over a ditch filled with bodies, while others were in the process of executing prisoners. As he descended closer to the ground he saw a terrified old woman trying to hide. His colleague indicated she should play dead. On their return, they found her head had been blown off.

Thompson then saw a group of men, women and children fleeing from the Americans into a bunker. He didn't hesitate in landing the helicopter between the soldiers and the civilians, going as far as to order his fellow airmen to shoot their countrymen if they fired. He told the soldiers to hold their fire while he rescued the Vietnamese. One soldier yelled: "We can get them out with a hand grenade". Some 300 unarmed civilians were slaughtered, some of them raped, on that dark day in 1968 but Americans didn't get to hear about it until a year later when the award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story - the same writer who first exposed the horrors of Abu Ghraib.

Thompson went on to save many more women and children at Mai Lai but on his return to the U.S. he was virtually ignored in his hometown which preferred to afford a hero's welcome to those who had committed the atrocities. They viewed Thompson as unpatriotic, even a traitor. It took 28 years for the U.S. military to reward his courage and compassion.

The Vietnam debacle sullied the reputations of two American presidents and lay heavily on the conscience of many Americans until President Ronald Reagan took office and restored America's self-confidence once more, despite unethical forays into the affairs of South American nations, dirty dealings with Iran and Iraq, and his bombing of Libya. After a succession of U.S. presidents, America was generally internationally respected. That is until the arrival of George W. Bush.

Says Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Congresswoman, New York City Comptroller and Brooklyn district attorney, who served on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Richard Nixon: "The horrendous mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners has disgraced the United States and endangered our troops and citizens. The best way to vindicate our country and undo the damage done to Iraqi prisoners is to ensure that everyone responsible is held accountable - without exceptions. We may pay a terrible price if we fail to do so."

She is right. Due to the current administration's warmongering policies anti-Americanism is rife. Many Americans now travel around the world saying they are Canadians and they have been instructed not to wave the Stars and Stripes during the Olympics to be held in Athens.

Writing in The Moscow Times columnist Chris Floyd asks the questions: Has Bush's war brought democracy to Iraq? Has it dealt a blow to terrorism? Has it made America - or the Middle East, or the world - any safer? No. But it was never intended to do those things. All this blood and chaos - this mass murder - has had but one aim: enhancing the power of a handful of elites. This mission has been accomplished. And there is not the slightest chance that any of the perpetrators will ever face justice." In this age of fast factual communication, global satellite television networks and the Internet, Floyd may yet be proved wrong. They may not go to jail, but they will be exposed and discredited. Hopefully, sooner rather than later!