'Standard Operating Procedure' is an intense look at Abu Ghraib

[babylonsister]

'Standard Operating Procedure' is an intense look at Abu Ghraib
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2008-06-06 14:08.

By Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun



Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris' documentary about the crimes against humanity at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, catalyzes unexpected and often harrowing blends of outrage, sympathy and sorrow. What it doesn't provoke are stock responses of political vengeance. Of course it condemns the higher-ups who escaped blame for encouraging atrocities against Iraqis in the name of American and Iraqi security.

But Morris' indictment is even more sweeping. He puts the finger on all of us. He makes us feel complacency implies consent to unjust policies and procedures and to a culture that makes light of degradation. A recent Mother Jones cover bore the headlines, "Torture Hits Home: When the unthinkable becomes acceptable." Standard Operating Procedure provides the how.

Without sermonizing, Morris brings us deep inside the people who shot the infamous photographs of U.S. soldiers degrading Iraqi detainees. The movie goes beyond condemnation of the military police who staged the humiliations and/or snapped the pictures, and even beyond an indictment of the operatives from "OGA" - "other government agencies" - who helped institute the practice of pummeling prisoners' psyches before subjecting them to interrogation (and, ultimately, physical torture).

As Morris catalyzes fresh evaluations of those images and events, he draws us uncomfortably close to the Army's fall guys and (especially) its fall gals. Even if you shake your head and say to yourself, "I could never do anything like that," you see how they could - and, sadly, did.

Morris (who won an Oscar for his Robert McNamara documentary, The Fog of War) never whitewashes anyone. But in Standard Operating Procedure he exhibits surprising sympathy for the most prominent figures in the prosecutions that ensued once the photos came to light. They include Lynndie England, best known as the petite woman holding a naked Iraqi by a leash, and Sabrina Harman, the wholesome-looking redhead who turned to the camera with a big thumbs-up and a cover-girl smile in front of death and carnage.

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