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HBO: How did you come to make this film?
Rory Kennedy: Initially, I was looking at the subject of
genocide, asking the question, why do
ordinary people commit extraordinary acts of
cruelty or evil? The idea was to look at
genocide from the perspective of the
perpetrators. Who are the people who commit
genocide? How are they brought into it?
What is the structural and institutional
process that happens? And what is the
individual psychological process that
happens?
What happened while I was researching that
project is that the photographs of Abu Ghraib
came out, and I found myself asking very
similar questions of the people who were
involved in the abuse that occurred at Abu
Ghraib.
Who were these people? What motivated
them? How much was it about the structure
and the situation at Abu Ghraib? How much
was it because the individuals were inclined
to be abusive? Were they just the kid next
door who was behaving badly? Or were they
psychopaths who had a tendency toward
being abusive?
I then went back to HBO with the idea of
refocusing the film on Abu Ghraib, but asking
the same questions, and really focusing on
the perpetrators, and the people who were
involved in the abuse. And they thought that
was a good idea. I was ultimately able to talk
to well over a dozen people who were at Abu
Ghraib at the time, many of whom were
perpetrators, as well as detainees who were
abused. All of the people were at Abu Ghraib
in the fall of 2003 when most of the abuses
seen in the photographs occurred.
To do a film that probed the psychology of the
perpetrators, and why they were motivated to
do what they did, I was thinking and expecting
that I would hear about their childhoods, that
there was any inclination towards violent
behavior, but when I asked each of them why
they committed these acts, they all said the
exact same thing: "I did it because I was told
to do it."
After I heard that the first time, I thought, oh,
that's interesting. By the second, and third,
and fourth time it became disturbing. Then it
became much more of an investigative film.
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib looks at the policies
that were put into place after 9/11 that I
believe contributed directly to what happened
at Abu Ghraib, looking up the chain of
command as to who was responsible for what
happened. Not just at the soldiers.
The film starts with a study that was done in
the sixties that shows a group of people who
are brought in to be part of an experiment.
They were asked to inflict electric shocks on
somebody who they knew to be innocent. The
purpose of the study was to find out how
willing people would be to shock somebody
else simply because they were asked to do so
by a person in authority. What they found is
that a hundred percent of the participants
were willing to shock, to ostensibly torture
somebody just because they were told to do
so.
I think what we saw at Abu Ghraib, in large
part, is a group of very young soldiers right
out of basic training, who were thrown into a
situation where they had no training to be
prison guards, and absolutely no training for
prepping detainees for interrogations, which is
what they were asked to do. The prison
population blossomed from less than a
thousand prisoners to over six thousand
prisoners in a very short period of time, and
there were merely three hundred prison
guards to guard six thousand prisoners. So
these guys are coming out of high school in
some cases, and being thrown into this
environment where they really don't know
what is normal and what is not.
They're then asked to keep people up all
night, and put them in stress positions and
humiliate them, to prepare the prisoners for
the more formal interrogation. There's a
general attitude of, take the gloves off,
anything goes, do what you need to do to get
the information. There were individuals who I
think did take it too far, and I do think there
was a level of sadism and abuse that
occurred. But it happened within a mostly
sanctioned environment.
HBO: Why do you think no one has been held
accountable?
Rory Kennedy: I think that goes back to the procedures that
were put into place after 9/11. There's still a
different set of procedures that apply to the
CIA, and when President Bush was asked
what those procedures were, his response was
to say, "I can't tell you that, I'm sure you
understand why." And I personally don't
understand why.
I think we need some transparency with this
administration, and I don't think the
executive branch should be making these
decisions exclusively. Even members of
Congress aren't aware of what the procedures
are. Many believe these procedures continue
to include what most of us would consider too
be torture.
HBO: And this continues to this day?
Rory Kennedy: I can't say that definitively, but many
indicators suggest that that is the case.
HBO: What could someone do if they feel outraged?
How can a person take action and, perhaps,
try to affect change?
Rory Kennedy: Well, I think there are a lot of things that
people can do to demand changes. First of all
we need to understand exactly what
happened at Abu Ghraib. There has yet to be
a 9/11 style commission where there's an
investigator who's really empowered to look
up and down the chain of command, to
examine exactly who was responsible.
To date, there have been eleven low-ranking
soldiers who have served time. No high-
ranking official has served any time for what
happened at Abu Ghraib. I think we the
American People deserve to know what
happened. We can't just imprison people and
push this under the rug and say it's over and
we've moved on.
There are a number of organizations like
Human Rights First, the ACLU, Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch, who are
very active in campaigns to ensure that we
change our policies so that we don't continue
to advocate torture in this country. And
people can certainly reach out to those
organizations. They have very active
campaigns that aim to get to the bottom of
what happened, and change US policy.
I would hope Ghosts of Abu Ghraib is a
contributing factor to that dialogue, and
encourages people to get involved. People can
have gatherings where they talk about it,
write their local newspapers--all these things
make a huge difference. Also helpful is calling
and writing their Congresspeople, talking to
their friends and family about what's
happening and really demanding change.
We need to voice those concerns, and really
embolden our leaders to take action, and
change our policies back to what America
used to represent--human rights and human
dignity, and respect for the law.
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