Comments on: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Tenet: “Guilty”

By: thomasfortenberry.net » Blog Archive » Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Tenet Are Guilty

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:22:28 +0000

[...] Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Tenet: “Guilty” More than 10,000 people cast their votes during the last year and a half in a virtual voting booth at http://www.LuciferEffect.com. Their judgments accord with the recent Senate Armed Services bipartisan report that blames Bush officials for detainee abuse. It also finds that the prison guards and interrogators were not the “true culprits.” [...]

By: Crime and Punishment « Crisis? What Crisis?

Crime and Punishment « Crisis? What Crisis? — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 21:16:13 +0000

[...] mock trial. Or the online “jury vote” carried out by Philip Zimbardo (and reported here). Or hope that I’m wrong and somewhere, here or abroad, someone has the guts to bring the [...]

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:39:04 +0000

A major problem with social psychology is its horrific idealogical selection bias in applying research findings to the real world. (A minor problem is the selection bias in the reported poll.) In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi committed the infinitely worse crime of decapitating U.S. civilian Nick Berg. In striking contrast to the outrage elicited by the prisoner abuse, the Iraqi reaction was a mixture of silence and jubilation. I would like to see psychologists ask a question analogous to the one considered in this column, “Who was the true culprit?” Was it just Al-Zarqawi? Or does ultimate blame rest with Allah and Muhammad for giving the orders, including “the legal frameworks, laws, and motivational conditions” embedded in the following statements of the Koran: “Strike off their [infidels] heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers,” and “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads.” Until these “top-down pressures” no longer corrupt the “Bad Barrel,” the scourge of Lucifer will continue.