Standard Operating Procedure

I completed a Iraq war/war on terror triumvirate of documentaries this weekend when I viewed “Standard Operating Procedure.” The movie is actually pretty riveting – if sobering – Instead of taking a broader view of the war – which “No End in Sight” and “Taxi Ride to the Dark Side” do – it focuses on recent interviews with many of the people made infamous by pictures in Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison (after many had served prison terms), along with dramatizations of the incidents they describe – plus photos and videos they take. These military enlisted people actually come off as mildly sympathetic – as they argued that what they did – terrified themselves - was humiliate (if also sexually abuse) the terrified prisoners (and place them in "stress positions") – while civilian intelligence people around them were beating prisoners to death. I don’t think it’s clear to the interviewees that the humiliation, stress positions, sexual abuse, and beatings were all torture – and that almost none of it produced any actionable intelligence – it was just Americans and Iraqi allies responding to a scary situation by striking out at convenient people around them. But the movie also makes clear that – for the most part – it was all part of U.S. policy – either official and explicit (hence the title) or implicit (“Do whatever it takes,” they were told by officers, even while commanders and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld (who appears as a villain in all three of these excellent movies) apparently purposely steered clear of parts of the prison, so they wouldn’t know). The interviewees suggest that they were scapegoats (only low-ranking people were charged in this, and the only commander to lose his or her command was a female general) and argue that their main crime was that they took pictures – and pretty persuasively. Although they concede that they went too far, they don’t generally concede that they probably shouldn’t have participated in any of this (although they then would have been court-martialed, they argue) and that taking pictures and filming the humiliation/sexual abuse was part of what they did wrong. (The movie also essentially argued that what happened was endemic to the whole war: After insurgent attacks U.S. troops would go into neighborhoods and sweep up all of the men and take them to Abu Graihb and other prisons, where poorly trained, inexperienced 18- and 19-year-old reservist guards and "interrogators" would humiliate and torture them - naked, hooded, handcuffed in painful positions, standing all night, getting no sleep - again, in hind sight - not really to get information, but just to do it - and were humiliated and tortured more vigorously on days and nights when insurgent sent mortar sheels that hit the prison or US. troops on patrol nearby got killed.) The amazing array of pictures and videos they took – only possible in this digital age – was in fact part of the torture/part of the crime: the pictures/video constituted torture porn, which they were making. (Pictured above bottom is the woman who - skinnier and with short hair and in military fatigues - was pictured in the most infamous Abu Ghraib photos, including one with her and a prisoner on a dog leash.)