The Ghost of Abu Ghraib

The Ghost of Abu Ghraib

Meghan Kehoe

April 26, 2017

The movie, Ghost of Abu Ghraib, is based on the events that happened during the operation of the U.S. military police brigades in Iraq, the city of Abu Ghraib. These events took place in the year 2003 in the Abu Ghraib prison. This prison was located here to put away those who disagreed with the government of Saddam Hussein at that time. This prison was basically a torture and execution chamber (Hamm, 2007).

        When the military police arrived in Abu Ghraib, they were directed to the prison since there was a dire need for a quick restoration of the prison system which the Iraqi government was not in a position to execute at that particular time. The conditions at Abu Ghraib prison were horrible. There was constant stench of urine, feces, and sweat that made the condition unbearable. The prison population was stable at first but within a short time, the population sky rocketed. As the number of detainees increase, there was also a need to interrogate each and every one of them to extract information about terrorism. Their efforts were futile since no one admitted to knowing any sort of terrorism and that it was a case of wrongful apprehension. With all this happening, the U.S. government was getting frustrated due to lack of results. Despite the fact that the United States had signed to the Geneva Convention, the government was compelled to use enhanced interrogation techniques which were very extreme. These techniques were so severe to the extent that some detainees died (Mestrovic, 2016). 

        The title, Ghost of Abu Ghraib, was quite relevant to the movie. According to the U.S. government, to ghost a detainee is to choose a person who is held in a confinement center and hiding their identity by not keeping their records and therefore rendering them unknown. This ghosting of prisoners was actually happening in Abu Ghraib prison and hence validating the title, Ghost of Abu Ghraib. This ghosting of detainees enabled the use of the severe and enhanced interrogation, since there was no way of following up on what had happened to anyone who underwent the process of interrogation (Hamm, 2007).

Groupthink occurs when a group makes bad decisions because of group influences leading to impairment of mental effectiveness and moral judgment. A group that is affected by groupthink is usually not willing to explore possibilities and alternatives that can be used to do things differently. Groups that are most likely to be exposed to groupthink; the members are more often than not from the same background and protected from external issues or opinions. In addition, groupthink occurs when there are no defined guidelines in the making of decisions (Hamm, 2007).