The soul that Lucifer ate

The most stunning revelation in a 370-page Justice US Department
Inspector General’s report released this week was that agents
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had formally opened a “War
Crimes” file, documenting torture they had witnessed at the
Guantánamo Bay US prison camp, before being ordered by
the administration to stop writing their reports.

The report makes it absolutely clear that torture was ordered
and planned in detail at the highest levels of the government—including
the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and
the Justice Department. Attempts to stop it on legal or pragmatic
grounds by individuals within the government were systematically
suppressed, and evidence of this criminal activity covered up. SOURCE

As terrible as the actions of this junta are what interests me is what hides in the heads of persons responsible for these atrocities. Do they realize they are committing immoral acts or do they consider them intricately human? Were they Good people who at some point turned Evil? Or were they always Evil (is there even such thing as Evil if the acts they are committing are part of what we the humans are, as history would suggest)?

Philip Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect: In this book, I summarize more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a "perfect storm" which leads good people to engage in evil actions. This transformation of human character is what I call the "Lucifer Effect," named after God's favorite angel, Lucifer, who fell from grace and ultimately became Satan.

How does a normal kid who grows up in a well to do Western society turn Evil? Is there any difference between growing up in a permanent war zone such as Afghanistan were there exists no living memory of peace, and that of a small town USA? Apparently not. Is Philip Zimbardo right? Good people transform into Lucifers regardless of where they come from or whatever their growing up conditions? I'd like to see how this transformation took place in the case of someone like C Rice, D Rumsfeld, J Bolton etc, step by step. Perhaps some day a new Truman Capote will visit them in jail and take their brains apart for the rest of us to see what's inside, but I wonder if such a vivisection would be complete without a priest or a specialist of the soul? Maybe it's the soul that is the answer - some people simply do not have it.