Officials trivialized torture by likening it to their own standing routines.

Evidence

Rumsfeld also trivialized the infliction of pain in a penned postscript on a memorandum limiting the use of stress standing to four hours. “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?” … (Jehl, 2004). In a military investigation to determine the scope and sources of abusive practices, the army’s inspector general reported that their investigation revealed no “systemic” problems. “These abuses should be viewed as what they are—unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals” (White & Higham, 2004). Ironically, the exonerative report only further exemplified the systemic problem. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 610

Categorization

• QUESTION: The inspector general’s exonerative report being itself evidence of systemic abuse is a small anatomy of institutional denial worth unpacking further.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘banality of evil’ literature and to Shiraz Maher’s work on how institutions normalize extreme measures.