The American media has gone into overdrive to try and explain and justify the happenings at Abu Ghraib.
"It just makes me laugh, because that's not Lynn," said Destiny Goin, 21, a friend. "She wouldn't pull a dog by its neck, let alone drag a human across a floor." [1] .

In the same report, The Washington Post also characterized the happenings as "chaos and unpressionalism". Here, we are told that "the prison was chaotically run, that there were no apparent rules governing interrogations and that Harman's military police unit was ill trained for the job it was asked to perform." . Enlightening. This was 'unprofessionalism'? I cant think of a better characterization.

A ridiculous amount of focus has been directed to the question of whether the interrogators were given the 'Geneva Convention'???? These soldiers need the Geneva Convention to be understand that what they did was not correct?

In any case, the individual soldiers have been humanized quite comprehensively. This is matched only by the corresponding disregard for the real victims. Not a single major newspaper has expressed any interest in seeking out the prisoners who were abused. They are not be humanized, not to be given a voice. Anyway, a report can be found here
Will any of this restore my honour to me? My dignity has been crushed under foot,'' he told The Associated Press. ``Bush says they (the guards) will be punished, but who knows? In all seriousness, do you really think they will?'' ... He said a car that was giving him a ride was stopped by U.S. troops because it was of a make often used in anti-U.S. attacks.

The second point to be made has to do with the surprise with which people here -- including anti-war activists -- seem to react. Somehow they assume that the American army is civilized. Of course the Syrian army, the Pakistani army and other brown/black armies are capable of this barbarism, but white Americans? God no. The American army may be strong and tough and rugged and sometimes institutional factors may lead it into brutal actions, but the soldiers are not capable of 'this'.
Thats incredibly racist. John Pilger has an article here that describes what these civilized people did in Vietnam.

"Nor did it explain the children burned to a bubbling pulp by something called napalm, or farmers hunted in helicopter "turkey shoots", or a "suspect" tortured to death with a rope around his neck, dragged behind a jeep filled with doped and laughing American soldiers.
Nor did it explain why so many soldiers kept human parts in their wallets and special forces officers who kept human skulls in their huts, inscribed with the words: "One down, a million to go."

Indeed, if sections of the anti-war movement persist with this antiseptic view of 'white Americans', that will be disastrous. It must mean that these people are unable to recognize the brutality and callousness and violence that characterizes the American empire even as they discuss it and document its actions.

The third point has to do with the fact that the pictures were released at all. This is quite in accordance with our general view of the media. The American media is, of course, not a totalitarian system. It works under strong institutional constraints and the Army and the White House have effective means of getting their viewpoint in. Moreover, and this is something not accounted for in the propaganda model, it functions in a broader intellectual climate of social liberalism, insularity, patriotism and contempt for the inferior races.
All this is on display in this incident. CBS withheld the stories for 2 weeks under a request from the Pentagon. It released them only when its hand was forced ... the photographs appeared on the Internet. This opened up space. Remember we have had evidence of sadistic behaviour by the 'brave men and women in uniform' for a long time. But the space that the CBS report opened up was essential for the New Yorker and the Washignton Post to follow suit. Most of the muck is still undisturbed and will probably remain so. In the meantime, contradictory forces in the media are rushing into a damage control operation. These incidents must be explained as 'aberrations'. We must not remind people that 'our' culture is the most violent in the world. That "we" have been responsible for killing millions of people, exploiting the rest of the world and that "our" prosperity is crucially dependent on imperialism. That would shatter too many illusions.

Addendum:

Let me add two news reports to this. First, lets grant the conservatives their due. Ruthless defenders of the status-quo that they are, they are unafraid about extending their ideas of individual responsibility here.[Of course, I suspect that their commitment to individual responsibility would break down if the interests of the American elite were threatened. As long as its soldiers hailing from rural America, or brown people, its fine]. Note what the weekly standard says:
"The prison guards were badly trained, we hear; they thought they were doing what the interrogators/contractors/CIA wanted them to do; they were cogs in a corrupt military machine. We might say something like that if we were being paid to defend these lowlifes. And, yes, there do seem to have been lamentable weaknesses in training and command. But "sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light" is evidence of a lack of humanity, not a lack of training"

Now, lets turn to the New York Times.
"But a more worrisome category of prisoners emerged from the widening insurgency in Iraq, as played out in the shootings, bombings and other attacks against American soldiers. More and more of those prisoners were filling the makeshift jails"

You see, all these bad guys were filling the prisons and stressing out the innocent soldiers.

So, where do I stand on this? As of now, I believe ... without firm evidence .. that behaviour is largely social. That it would be difficult to really define something called 'innate human nature'. So I disagree with people who say that war brings out the 'real' human nature ... I dont believe that exists. War puts people in a certain social surroundings that -- together with deeper cultural and historical-social influences -- leads them to behave in a certain way. From this viewpoint, I agree with Robert Fisk. I dont think these soldiers were 'evil'. Rather, I believe that American/British culture is extremely racist and condescending towards the inferior races -- that army training systematically dehumanizes and brutalizes people. Moreover, given this racist culture that refuses to acknowledge Iraqis as equals and virtually unlimited power over their victims -- this is exactly how you would expect British/American soldiers to behave.
So, in a sense I agree with the New York Times idea that this behaviour was the result of systemic causes, though I would look deeper into the system and not superficially at 'chaos' or 'ill-preparedness' or whatever other apologetic nonsense they turn out.

P.S: And its extremely interesting that I cant find a single black/hispanic/native american soldier involved in the abuse despite the fact that almost half of the American army is non-white. See here for statistics.