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Tue 10 May, 2011 12:24 am
Context:
Zimbardo tried to explain this, via video
link, to a military court in Baghdad as an
expert witness for the defense in Frederick’s
trial in the fall of 2004. An Army reservist
with a previously laudable military record,
including more than a dozen medals and
other awards, Frederick shipped out for Iraq
in October 2003 and soon found himself
supervising about a dozen military police
and dozens more Iraqi police responsible
for guarding more than 1000 Iraqi prison-
ers at Abu Ghraib. The prisoner population
had recently tripled, creating a chaotic envi-
ronment in which standard procedures and
oversight broke down. The language barrier
made prisoners seem anonymous, Zimbardo
says, and many prisoners were forced to go
naked, further dehumanizing them and creat-
ing a sexually charged atmosphere. Guards
worked daily 12-hour shifts for weeks on end.
Fear of a revolt—or an attack from outside—
mixed with boredom and exhaustion to create
a volatile brew.
The volatile state referred to was a product of several factors, of which the mental state of the guards and prisoners, while very important, was not the only factor. The point of using the word brew is to underline that several components were mixed together to produce the volatile state.
@Setanta,
A similar phrase sometimes used in these circumstances would be 'a recipe for disaster.'
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