What we know about prisons

So I wonder if David Ignatius of the Washington Post knows about the Stanford Prison Experiment..? Certainly he is making a very similar argument about how prisons, in the modern system, and especially at Guantanamo dehumanize not only the prisoners but also the guards and the entire society in which they are based. Certainly the suicides of the prisoners may have been political, but regardless of their motivation it is clear that this was the only choice left to maintain some form of dignity.