This Newsweek web exclusive has very powerful comments about the Iraq prison scandal and then more about the impulses that drive all of us, for good or bad, including those that have driven President Bush. Here's some quotes:

NEWSWEEK: What are the politics of denial?
Michael Milburn: We found that, particularly for males who had never had any psychotherapy, when they reported a high level of childhood punishment, they were significantly more likely to endorse a range of punitive public policies like support for the death penalty, opposition to abortion, support for the use of military force. We used a notion of therapy as a general indicator of denial or lack of denial. Well, the extent to which emotion connected to childhood punishment was driving their political attitudes, when they had an opportunity to sort of reflect on that and [have a] short-term catharsis experience, that sort of energy disappears.

What we have found, really broadly, is the higher level of punitiveness among political conservatives is really strongly associated with experiences, generally, of harsh punishment from childhood. It’s not just going to be that they were spanked; there’s a whole family climate, and punishment is just going to be one of those indicators of that. We have a whole chapter on the religious right. In our research we also found that when we gave people the statement “the amount of physical and sexual abuse in this country is greatly exaggerated by the mass media,” conservatives were significantly more likely to agree with that.

As to President Bush's formative experiences:

What does Bush’s upbringing and conservativism tell you about the way he sees the world?
Bush is really fascinating. There was a televised interview with Barbara Bush during the [2000] campaign. She was talking about her son and relating this one incident where he had come home drunk and his father was walking out to talk to him. W was saying, “OK Dad, right now, let’s do it.” Clearly there’s a tremendous amount of anger there. Not that this explains everything that’s going on, but it’s clearly, to me, a factor in his I’m-gonna-get-the-guy-who-threatened-my-dad-but-I’m-also-going-to-show-my-dad-that- I-can-do-stuff-that-he-couldn’t-do [attitude].