Guilt of the Abu Ghraib Guards

The guards of Abu Ghraib (Baghdad Correctional Facility) during the Iraqi war have been criticized and consequently punished for their abusive behavior.

Punishing the guards is debatable, as such behavior was certainly known to develop, unless not especially prohibited. Thus the ones actually responsible to the abusive developments are those who should have controlled the guards: the prison officers and the US Government.

In 1971 Stanford University conducted a psychological experiment to understand roles and behavior in prison. In the experiment voluntary students were randomly appointed to act as guards or prisoners:

"The simulation became so real, and the guards became so abusive, that the experiment had to be shut down after only 6 days rather than the two weeks planned."

The Stanford Prison Experiment was funded by government grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

For details of the experiment see Stanford Prison Experiment
For details of Abu Ghraib see Wikipedia