critical theory with slavoj zizek: what about the clear contrast between the “standard” way prisoners were tortured in the previous Saddam’s regime and the US Army tortures? In the previous regime, the accent was on direct brutal infliction of pain, while the US soldiers focused on psychological humiliation. … To anyone acquainted with the reality of the US way of life, the photos immediately brought to mind the obscene underside of the US popular culture - the initiatic rituals of torture and humiliation one has to undergo in order to be accepted into a closed community. Do we not see similar photos in regular intervals in the US press, when some scandal explodes in an army unit or in a high school campus, where the initiatic ritual went overboard and soldiers or students got hurt beyond a level considered tolerable, forced to assume a humiliating pose, to perform debasing gestures (like penetrating their anal opening with a beer bottle in front of their peers), to suffer being pierced by needles…