I found an interesting bit here:
http://www.reason.com/cy/cy051104.shtml
Cruelty is a human trait that cuts across national lines. As the scandal has shown, it cuts across gender lines as well: At least two female soldiers have been implicated in the mistreatment and sexual humiliation of prisoners, one of them appearing in some of the infamous photos. The prison commander was also a woman, Brigadier General Janice Karpinski.
Ludicrously, a few conservatives—the smirking provocateur Ann Coulter and the usually sensible Linda Chavez—have used this as an argument against women in the military. A more common response, from left and right, has been hand-wringing over the fact that women could do such things—either because women themselves have been victims of sexual violence or because women should be inherently better than that. But there is little basis for such expectations. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had their share of female torturers.
When given power over others, some human beings (including women) will abuse that power in sickening ways. This is a fact of life. The responsibility of the US military was to prevent such abuses or at least nip them in the bud. This responsibility has not been met—a failure that we are only now, perhaps too late for the war effort, beginning to correct.